We are a group of friends and acquaintances -- a merry band of pranksters indeed -- who have been arguing about politics on-and-off, then really on, then a little off... since 1998. On email. But that meant literally thousands of emails a year. That was too many. So here's the blog dedicated to carrying on that spirit of political and pop culture argument and dialogue. You might think of us as "schmoliticians", because while we take politics seriously, we try not to take ourselves quite so.
The furor over Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is reaching a fever pitch. What does everyone think about his job security? What about his culpability for the war in Iraq, for Abu Graib? Is he screwing things up or is he doing a decent job? Is he a scapegoat for the Administration? Is Bush's support genuine (does anyone recall what Bush said about FEMA Director Michael Brown)?
posted by Sean @ 4/17/2006 07:53:00 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
My take: one of the hawks that were ready to invade Iraq pre-9/11 and pushed an invasion using 9/11 as an excuse. Certainly complicit in 1) "tailoring" of intel to support invasion movement, 2) the rush to war without sufficient planning, 3) Abu Graib and the like (probably one of those who still is wondering what the hubbub is all about), and 3) no more to blame the rest of the senior admin, the Prez, VP, etc., but that doesn't really help him much.
Scape goat? No, a ringleader can't be a scapegoat. First domino to fall? Hopefully.
A comment on Pete's item (2). There was sufficient planning for the Iraq war - the SecDef and White House chose to change the plan to fit political needs. There was insufficient planning for post-war.
I suspect we'll see Rumsfeld want to spend more time with his family sometime this summer.
Sorry, I was imprecise in my wording. When I referred to a failure in "war planning," I was referring to overall planning, including post-initial invasion. You are correct that the initial military phase (invade and conquer) appeared to go off without much of a hitch.
Actually, the initial war phase wasn't as successful as you would think. Can't remember where, but I recently heard a military expert talking about the fatal flaws in the US' strategy. Because speed was the theme, if soldiers/Marines came upon a large pocket of resistance, they bypassed it and continued on to their pre-set objectives. These bypassed Iraqi forces therefore survived and became the same insurgent forces we're fighting today. I know hindsight is 20-20, but maybe if we had taken the time to neutralize these threats in the opening months of the war, we wouldn't be having so much trouble now.
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