George's thumping was no gesture

[cal04]

"STUFF happens." Followers of the disastrous career of Donald Rumsfeld will remember that famous quip, made at a Pentagon news conference back in April 2003, not long after the invasion of Iraq. The Defence Secretary was at his sardonic worst, airily waving away the looting of Baghdad as a figment of the media's imagination.

(snip)
Stuff happened to Rumsfeld far too late. Thank heavens he has gone at last, swept away in the Democrat triumph in the US midterm elections, but he should have been fired two years ago as that quagmire he did so much to create opened up before him. He hung on because he was protected by George Bush's culpable stupidity and by his long and scheming relationship with the Vice-President, "Deadeye Dick" Cheney, the power behind the White House imperial throne.

But no more. Arrogant, stubborn, ignorant and, above all, just plain incompetent, Rummy will go down in the trash can of history as a secretary of defence worse even than Robert McNamara, who failed in Vietnam at such a catastrophic cost of American lives, treasure and international prestige.

(snip)
DAN RATHER, the legendary former CBS news anchor, told Peter FitzSimons and me on radio on Tuesday that these midterm elections would be the most crucial since the American Civil War.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/georges-thumping-was-no-gesture/2006/11/10/1162661895825.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

[Demit]

1. Haha! The author calls out our blathering "mountebank president"—

"...At long last, the good sense of the American people has reasserted itself. Sickened by the war and disgusted by the sleaze and greed of Republican Washington, they delivered to Bush what he himself grudgingly conceded was a "thumping". The world should be grateful they did.

Not that this mountebank President seems to have taken much on board from said thumping. To do so is evidently beyond him. "I'm committed to victory," he blathered at his post-election news conference. ..."

Dead-on assessment.