On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> So why now? Why this listing of stuff everyone (or at least, everyone
> who's paying attention) must have known for many months? And why so many
> attacks from Legion of Doom members like Lott and Kristol? Or, to put it
> another way, why's he suddenly appearing so vulnerable that he's even
> receiving fire from parts of his own political base?
2nd question first: Kristol's always been against Rumsfeld because Rumsfeld's signature "transformation" has been to decrease the size of the attacking force. But without more troops, the legion of doom is stuck in neutral. And this is something that unites neo-cons and army brass: they both think you need a bigger army if you are going to invade, and that Rummy's insistence on invading with less doomed what happened in Iraq. And when the army brass hate someone, they always have people in Congress they can convince to be their mouthpieces.
As for why all his critics are gathering together now, the big reason seems to be that they all have a shared sense that maybe now is the moment it can have an effect. Besides the self-confirmating nature of such a snowballing process, there seems to be at least three contributing factors:
1) The neocons, who I think are the story drivers,
sense that if the small army policy isn't changed, the whole
opportunity of the 2nd Bush term will be lost for them, because we're
flat out of troops;
2) The mass exodus of cabinet members got their hopes up and then dashed
them when Rummy was flagged to stay on; and
3) the story of Rummy being cavalier to the troops' complaints made him look
vulnerable.
Rummy's the perfect scapegoat, hated by peacniks for the war and by warmongers for fucking it up, so its easy to get pundits excited by the smell of his blood in the water. But based on past practice, that probably means he's cemented in place for the foreseeable future. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Busheviks have ever fired a single member of the administration when they came under outside criticism. Tenet is kind of the exception that proved the rule -- they specifically waited for a rare moment when nobody was criticizing him.
Michael