Rummy the Contrite

Donald Rumsfeld has proven that he does so care about the troops. Lookee! He went to Iraq on Christmas Eve and visited with them and saw a few who were injured and said he liked them bunches and, just for good measure, he had a sandwich with the boys.

Still, you can take the cantankerous old fart out of the Beltway, but you just can't take the Beltway out of the cantankerous old fart (or something like that). When a soldier asked him (and surely with no coaxing from the White House PR machine) how to win the war in the media, a glint returned to Rummy's eye as he referenced the verbal knocks he'd taken from some troops several weeks earlier in Kuwait. "I guess what's news has to be bad news to get on the press," chortled Rumsfeld. "That does not sound like a question that was planted by the press."

Give it up to the Rude Pundit, for a no-holds-barred take on Rummy's newfound contrition in the face of stinging criticism and howls for his resignation:

"Donald Rumsfeld is a sad, sad man. How do we know? He said so ... at a Pentagon briefing ... in an attempt to get Santa to move him from the Naughty list to the Nice one: 'I am truly saddened by the thought that anyone could have the impression that I or others here are doing anything other than working urgently to see that the lives of the fighting men and women are protected and are cared for in every way humanly possible.' Poor Donald Rumsfeld. Having to bear the burden of the big ol' war on his arthritic shoulders. How could we? Are we not ashamed as Americans to want to beat up this old man?

"Oh, sure, sure, one might criticize Rumsfeld for having used a machine to sign letters telling families that little Jesse and Janey ain't comin' home for Christmas, but when you are as sensitive a man as Rumsfeld, how could you handle that? Tears smear ink, you know. But Rumsfeld will sign them now, yes, yes, he will, because those thinning arms must support our demands, our whims, of a Secretary of Defense able to chill his heart so he can sign away life after life after life.

"Chances are Rumsfeld will have to go home and turn on video of the first month of war, a fire in the hearth, a cognac on the side table, embracing himself, trying to keep warm in the cold, lonely end of year darkness, hugging his body so hard, the sad man who so badly wanted the war.

"Thomas Pynchon's epic, absurdist, great big 'f*ck you' of a novel, Gravity's Rainbow, ends with a startling image: we, all of us, the readers of the very book we are holding, are seated in a movie theatre and we're waiting as a rocket, with a young man bound inside, is flying towards our cinema to destroy us all. The book concludes before that rocket completes its journey, but we know that the rocket will fall. It is the nature of gravity.

"It's the way the Rude Pundit's been feeling lately, like we're all in this giant movie cineplex, and we're watching some shitty film, and the thing is, we know - hell, we knew from the previews, how the movie's gonna end. And we just keep checkin' our watches, wondering if we could please stop wasting our time and get to the ending already. But above our heads a rocket is at the peak of its arc. It must return to earth. What rises must, indeed, fall."

Bravo.