Tag: rumsfeld

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Pictures

Whitehouseradio

Perusing the White House website this morning for more of the president’s wisdom, I came across the image to the left, which is still on public display. I see Senator Palpatine, in the middle; and Anikin, on the right. But I can’t quite place the figure on the left. Not the microphone–the other one.

Speaking of images, the San Francisco Chronicle this morning has a big front-page story on the identity of the source who in 2004 leaked transcripts from a federal grand jury to two reporters at the paper. Accompanying the story, both print and online, are pictures (different ones in each place, but taken at the same time and place by the same Chronicle photographer) showing the reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, and their Hearst Corporation lawyer. But there’s someone else in the pictures, too: Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, who is such a key part of today’s stories that he is never mentioned. So why did the paper, which has a stack of Williams/Fainaru-Wada images as high as an elephant’s eye (speaking figuratively), use pictures with Bronstein? I can’t believe Bronstein had anything to do with choosing the images. In some way, it looks like the boss’s vanity and self-importance have become institutionalized.

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‘You’re Doing a Heckuva Job’–Rumsfeld/Cheney Edition

Bush came out the other day to tell the world that Rumsfeld and Cheney are his guys for the rest of his term. No disaster they author is too large for the president to send them on a permanent vacation. Translation, by way of my brother John: “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Dick and Rummy.” So now: How long before one of them–Rumsfeld, because the only way Cheney’s going down is if Darth Vader throws him into the Death Star’s reactor core (or whatever that was in “Return of the Jedi”)–is sent packing.

Maybe not long. Check out the Army Times editorial urging Bush to get rid of Rumsfeld:

“ ‘So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.’

“That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

“But until recently, the ‘hard bruising’ truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington.

“One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: ‘mission accomplished,’ the insurgency is ‘in its last throes,’ and ‘back off,’ we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples. …” (Read the rest.)

Score one for the reality-based community,

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Those Crazy Americans

You’ve got to love those crazy Americans. Wait, that’s me, too. Change that to “us crazy Americans.” Just seven weeks ago, we had a chance to fire the guy who decided that the single most important thing to do in the whole wide world, just couldn’t wait to get it done, was to bust world-class bad guy and former U.S. ally (those crazy Americans!) Saddam Hussein.

But no. For reasons still inadequately explained (and no, I’m not buying fraud as the answer, or the “morality” thing, either) and perhaps irretrievably buried in the minds of tens of millions of voters, the guy was re-elected.

Now, the Washington Post and ABC News are out with a new poll: A majority of us crazy Americans now think the war’s, like, a mistake:

“Most Americans now believe the war with Iraq was not worth fighting and more than half want to fire embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the chief architect of that conflict, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

“The survey found that 56 percent of the country now believes that the cost of the conflict in Iraq outweighs the benefits, while 42 percent disagreed. It marked the first time since the war began that a clear majority of Americans have judged the war to have been a mistake.

“Barely a third of the country approves of the job that Rumsfeld is doing as defense secretary, and 52 percent said President Bush should sack Rumsfeld, a view shared by a big majority of Democrats and political independents.”

But then comes the number that probably partly explains the way we crazy Americans voted last month: “… Nearly six in 10 — 58 percent — said the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq rather than withdraw them, a proportion that has not changed in seven months.”

OK — that’s honorable. Let’s not cut and run and leave those nice Iraqis in the lurch. The thing you have to question about that sort of thinking, though, is the assumption that our indefinite presence is a stabilizing, positive influence. I mean, we sure can’t imagine anyplace in the world that doesn’t benefit from our warm attention, but at some point you have to consider the possibility that Iraq could be better off with some different kind of foreign oversight, or regime, than what we’re trying to impose.