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Kerikterizing Rumsfeld
Rich Galen Wednesday December 22, 2004
From New Orleans, Louisiana
The Louisiana Pachyderms
One of the problems with political people is they never know when to say "enough is enough." This is true of Republicans and Democrats. Conservatives and Liberals.
A couple of weeks ago, Bernie Kerik attempted to escape a full-frontal investigation by entering a plea of guilty to having hired an illegal immigrant and not paying the required taxes. He apparently believed that if he would cop to the lesser offense of "nanny-gate," everyone would forget about it. And him.
Oops. No one did forget. The press waded into the clothes bin and uncovered enough dirty laundry to make the officials in New York City take a hard look at what he might have been up to when he was Commissioner of Corrections and Commissioner of Police.
All of this attention - official and otherwise - appears to be fully warranted.
So, the Left is feeling a little giddy. They whiffed at the big prize - taking out President Bush in the November elections - but they got some measure of revenge by gleefully pointing out how foolish Bernie Kerik made not only the White House look, but also the best known Italian American since Amerigo Vespucci - Rudy Giuliani.
Bush, Giuliani, Kerik. Unassisted triple play. Cleared the bases. Almost.
There's still that Rumsfeld guy.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been coated with Teflon since the beginning of the Bush Administration. First, he was blessed with a brilliant communications aide in Tory Clarke.
After she left he was still able to wink, nudge, and nod his way through session after session with a Pentagon press corps which may have been more interested in getting clever thrust-and-parry ammunition for use on the Washington cocktail party circuit than in asking tough questions.
Until Kuwait and an enlisted National Guardsman asked why there weren't enough armored vehicles.
Rumsfeld was not ready for the question and his answer was seized upon by his personal enemies, opponents of the war, and those who disapprove of the broader Administration strategy.
In a flash, Rumsfeld's own armor vanished.
Democrats are demanding his resignation, hoping to catch President Bush in a literal and figurative transition.
The Pentagon press corps, embarrassed that a local reporter from God-Knows-Where, Tennessee was more clever than it, is in a projectile sweat to get back in control of the story.
Republicans who have no other way to claw their way onto Sunday news programs, are asking "the difficult questions" (questions which, by the way, neither they nor their crack staffs had thought of in the previous two years).
In short, they are attempting to Kerikterize Rumsfeld.
Here's a tip: Ain't gonna happen.
Iraq is most certainly not going perfectly by any stretch of any imagination. But it is - even the wake of yesterday's horror - moving forward.
This past weekend we celebrated the 60th anniversary marking the start of the Battle of the Bulge.
Imagine if that six-week battle, which resulted in two hundred thousand - TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND - men dead and wounded on both sides, were being covered the way Iraq is being covered today.
There would be a public outcry demanding the instantaneous and simultaneous resignations of George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley.
Military "analysts" would be all over the cable nets demanding to know "How did the American military command miss the fact that the Germans had moved more than two full Armies into the Ardennes?"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's political opponents - and many of his friends - would be demanding that he change the military leadership which had been faithful to FDR, which was now in danger of losing the war, and which refused to change tactics in the face of a resurgent enemy.
How the path of history would have altered course if those three men had been forced off the field of battle.
Thus is the danger of measuring war a battle at a time, and measuring a battle a day at a time.
The President has set the course. Don Rumsfeld will continue direct the forces necessary to achieve it.
Kerikterizing Rumsfeld will be a wasted effort and a distraction from the task at hand.
On the Secret Decoder Ring today: A link to a summary of the Battle of the Bulge, a link to yesterday's MULLINGS Extra, and a Mullfoto from the window of my plane.
--END --
Copyright © 2004 Richard A. Galen
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