this pile-on rumsfeld by retired generals is really interesting. if anyone else were president, i would say that rummy was a goner. but bush seems to make a fetish out of refusing to buckle under pressure. his supporters call it commitment to principle. but i think it's just bullheadedness and his willingness to reward profound incompetence.
but either way you may see it, it's difficult to predict the imminent doom of rumsfeld, no matter how many generals say he sucks. of course, bush has buckled before (e.g. harriet miers). but because he's so adverse to giving the appearance of caving, i wonder if an ongoing pile-on will just make him more determined to keep rummy no matter what the costs.
as i said a while ago, bush should have made rumsfeld resign when the abu ghraib scandal first came out. it would have been a really smart political move, both demonstrating to the arab world how seriously the administration took the scandal, and served as a lesson that in our system even the elite are held accountable. those two facts would have gone a long way to diffuse some of the damage that did to american credibility in the region and would have helped bush's project in iraq enormously. as shrewd a move as that would have been, bush simply didn't have it in him 2 years ago. i wonder if he's capable making the much smaller gesture of canning rummy now.
(via the big A)
