Yep, Two to One They Set You Up, Son

Democratic Underground received an advance copy of a Military Times editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle. DU has reprinted the editorial. The gist of the editorial is that military mavens have decided Rumsfeld has to go. The SF Chronicle reported, “An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.” You can read it on DU, but the last two paragraphs say it all, “This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go.” Vanity Fair printed an exclusive article on November 3rd by David Rose highlighting important parts of interviews with key Republicans that will appear in Vanity Fair in January. The men interviewed are all blaming George W. Bush for the failure of the war in Iraq. If Bush remains stubbornly devoted to Rumsfeld, it will be one more indication of his stupidity and failure as president. George W. Bush is now and always has been the designated scapegoat for the Republican Party. If he acts in his all-too-predictable fashion for the next two years, he will simply be carrying out the role the Republican Party has assigned to him: Dummy Asshole Fallguy. Richard Perle was an assistant Secretary of Defense under president Ronald Reagan, he served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004, and was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2003 under George W. Bush. Perle signed the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles in 1997 that called for the US to “meet threats before they become dire”, and to “challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values”. He was vociferously behind the US attack on Iraq because it furthered the PNAC principles. But now he is as disillusioned about the US ability to make pre-emptive attacks as many stalwart fascists became about Hitler. Perle now says, “At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.” Perle told David Rose, "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.'”. Neocon par excellence Kenneth Adelman told David Rose: “They (the national-security team) turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional." Adelman added, “Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go." David Frum who coined the “axis of evil” phrase, told David Rose, "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything." And on and on it goes: Former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer Michael Rubin said, "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him.” Frank Gaffney, who was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy (and also signed the PNAC Statement of Principles) said, "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric.” The sell-out is a fait accompli. George W. Bush who never was anything more than a water boy has now officially been saddled with having brought down the Republican Party and singlehandedly causing all the White House woes. Fortunately for Bush, he is so mentally impaired and psychotic that he has no idea what has happened.