Rumsfeld: Ass Covering 101

There are just so many ways to describe Donald Rumsfeld's behavior as revealed by Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in his book Wiser In Battle. I could have gone with "World Class Selective Amnesia" or "War and the Art of Creative Fiction" or even "How to Play Fantasy Role Play Games With Real Human Lives."

By 2006 Rumsfeld had finally realized that Iraq was a monumental screw up and he was looking for someone else to blame. The neo-con leadership of the government from Bush and Cheney, through Rumsfeld and Doug Feith, and down to Paul Bremer and Dan Senor, had entered the Iraq War fully delusional. They had expected the Iraq War to be a fun romp in the sand, reminiscent of childhood vacations to the beach. They had believed their own hype about "cake walk," "weeks not months," and "Mission Accomplished" and they had made decisions based on their delusions. The reality in Iraq had been made infinitely worse by those decisions.

In 2006 as the bodies piled up and the war slogged on Donald Rumsfeld was concentrating on one thing - how to get the career military to take all of the blame for the fuck up. He ordered a review and then suppressed it when it didn't parrot his fantasies. He tried bribing Gen. Sanchez. To his credit Sanchez retained his honor.

The Administration's current mindset is to pretend that the first five years of the war never happened - that we have always been in Iraq and we always shall be. They are pretending that Iraq is an independent nation that asked our army into the country when the truth is that Iraq is a colonial possession of the United States, they have asked us to leave (hell, they are setting off bombs to urge us to leave) but we keep ignoring them.

And with eternal optimism the Administration is preparing to attack Iran. Believing with childlike faith that the world secretly wants us to do this. Believing with a frightening innocence that the Iranian people secretly will rejoice when we bomb their country. And believing with the steadiness of simpletons that there will be no long term consequences.