To Help Restore U.S. Standing, Rumsfeld Must Take the Fall (Max Boot! LAT)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot13may13,1,4252198,print.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

The Defense chief isn't to blame for prisoner abuse, but his departure would speed the repair of our credibility.
Max Boot

May 13, 2004



Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's failure to offer his resignation over the Abu Ghraib scandal is sadly typical of the lack of accountability that permeates the U.S. government.

We have suffered some catastrophic failures during the last few years. On Sept. 11, 3,000 people might have been saved if FBI, CIA, immigration and customs officers had been a little more diligent and a bit more willing to cooperate with one another. More recently, we went to war in Iraq based on the assurance of the intelligence community that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

How many people have been canned for these egregious cock-ups? Zero. The only government employee fired in connection with the war on terror was poor old retired Adm. John Poindexter, who had the temerity to try to come up with a computer program (with the admittedly Orwellian name Total Information Awareness) designed to prevent future 9/11s.

(snip)

More reasonable is the concern that by throwing Rumsfeld overboard the administration might signal terminal weakness to its Democratic critics and — more important — to our enemies abroad. That is a real risk, but at this point it seems a risk worth running to prevent the current crisis from spiraling out of control.


Comment: Even a generally rabid wingnut neocon apologist/booster like Boot coming off the reservation w/ respect to Rumsfeld. Good.

will add credibility to this filthy, illegal war, not even some bureaucrat losing his job prince.

The insurgents are just sons, brothers, fathers, mothers, daughters, and sisters trying to save their home, trying to avenge the death of their children, trying to not get raped in some cell, trying to eat, trying to put an end to the grief we in all our lost sense of democracy as citizens have caused them.

This war is FILTH!

all throughout our national government: if the cancer is not arrested, our Republic faces its demise.