“Clearly, we need to improve our public diplomacy and information age communication in the Muslim world,” Kennedy said in a statement. “But nothing has done more to encourage increased al-Qaida recruitment and made America less safe than the war in Iraq and the incompetent way it’s been managed. Our greatest failure is our policy.”
Why is Rummy still in this disaster of an administration? His relationship with Dead Eye Dick likely is the start of the explanation. We know Bu$h hates to admit a mistake and that his White House tends to rewards loyalty above experience or competency yet surely there’s a tipping point even for W. This week we’ve seen yet another illustration of how The Veep is often seemingly in charge in this administration. Earlier in the week I was telling some folks (unfortunately hemmed up with me when national news came up!) that Dick selected Dick (In this link, John Dean, and indeed my old Daddy is spinning in his grave that I’d refer to a minion of Tricky Dick, urges attention be given to the minority report Congressman Cheney gave the House on the Iran-Contra hearings back in 1987!). My colleagues, "learned educators" that they are, were surprised by this fact. Of course 50% of our citizenry was clueless enough, at least per Diebold, to send this cabal back for another four years.
I am almost certain most Americans don’t know the long history of Rummy and the Snarling Scattergunner. Here is just one image via materials apparently housed in part at the University of Texas. The Ford Presidential Library and Museum is at Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan where Gerald Ford bumped heads, possibly too hard, on the gridiron for the Wolverines before heading off to Yale to eventually earn a law degree. Something is bothering me (Is the Captain getting conspiratorial?) about this conduit though Texas yet I guess it is just that the LBJ is at Texas so the Horns get their own gateway.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National gives us (Isn’t it interesting that we have to go aboard to find this sort of thing? Even here in the Highland sticks the Bubbas and Bubbettes can stumble across Big Fat Idiot and Snarly Sean and …) an interview where Cheney is described as Rummy’s protégé. Stan Correy on a Background Briefing, from back in the day, actually just in May of 2003, gives us a long transcript of some conversations on Dead Eye and Rummy with Victor Davis Hanson and Brookings’ Peter W. Singer and Defense Policy Board’s Ken Adelman and … Wil Hylton (who tore into this pair in Esquire with his “Dick and Don go to War” piece from 2002 that I can't link to unfortuantely) that is just fascinating. Here is just one section:
Stan Correy: Lingering conservative ill feeling hampered Rumsfeld’s reform agenda when he got the job of Secretary of Defense in early 2001.
Wil Hylton: Bush Senior hated Rumsfeld so much that he prevented Rumsfeld from being in any kind of significant role during the entire Reagan term of eight years, and Bush Senior’s term of four years. So for 12 years, followed by another 8 years of the Clinton Administration, Rumsfeld had absolutely no voice, plus preceding the Reagan Administration, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was in office. So now it’s something like 24 years where Rumsfeld was out of Washington. Then he shows up in Washington and it’s hardly surprising that he didn’t have a lot of allies at that point.
Stan Correy: His only ally was his younger protégé, Vice President Dick Cheney, who arm-twisted the Bush camp to give Rumsfeld the job of Defense Secretary. It was Cheney that Wil Hylton was concentrating on for his Esquire profile in September 2001. Rumsfeld was the supporting act, but then history intervened.
Dick arm-twisted. I’m shocked, shocked! At least he didn’t shoot anybody!
Rolling Stone also has a fascinating view into Cheney from back in 2004. The Apocalyptic image, which was part of the 2004 Rove campaign strategy and yet also his long history of mistaken views as blogged by The Nation’s John Nichols, accompanying the story of Dead Eye and Rummy and … is worth a visit. I think I saw some if this T.D. Allman piece a few years back but damned if it doesn’t resonate even more after last weekend brought Dead Eye fully back in the public eye. PBS-FrontLine and The Washington Post gave us “Rummy’s War” a while back that is worth a visit as well. If formicating, and yes fellatio does count, can be how the ReThuglicans wiggled back into the White House then a bungled bird hunt might be a chance to remind the American public that Bu$hCo principals have a whole heap of ‘splaining to do. Whittington’s wounds and Dead Eye’s delays become a metaphor maybe? Might be a way to start to break through to Joe and Jill Sixpack yet we've still got to offer an alernative to the DLC's Republican Lite.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is likewise showing her ineptness and misperceptions yet she’s being dangled as a response to Hateful Hil. Dr. Rice can fall back on academia, where our stakes aren’t as high, as her reputation is not yet fully trashed. Rummy has made tons with Tamiflu! And Dick can go back to Halliburton. Rummy might get him on with ABB in Switzerland which built nuclear reactors for North Korea back when Rummy was on their Board. Tricky Dick 2.0 can be even closer there to one of his hunting buddies Mrs. Pamela Willeford where she serves the diplomatic interests of our nation with Switzerland and Lichtenstein. He can’t think of a more beautiful setting except for “perhaps my own valley in the Grand Tetons”. So he’s a Tetons man? And he has his very own valley? His own little piece of Halliburton Heaven!
Worst administration ever! Best cabal ever! Peace … or War!
No comments:
Post a Comment