Rummy Kicked and Beaten Like an Old Dog

U.S. Sen. John McCain. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. The chorus of conservatives urging the resignation/ouster/swift kick in the ass of Donald Rumsfeld is starting to sound more like a cacophony.

Ever since the Defense Secretary mused on how, sure, armor would be nice and all in a perfect world, Rummy has been attracting more criticism than flies to a Wafflehouse.

You know things are getting hot for Mr. Cranky when Kristol, one of the leading neocons who led the charge for war in Iraq, says it's time to go. In a Dec. 15 op-ed in the Washington Post, Kristol lambastes Rummy's general incompetence.

"Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld," Kristol writes.

"Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, 'It's interesting.' In fact, 'if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.' Good point. Why have armor at all?

"All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck? ... These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."

There's not much I agree with Bill Kristol on, but I give the guy props on this one. The call for Rummy's departure is long past due. The demerits have been piling up: the lethally low estimate of troops needed to secure the peace in Iraq, his nonchalant "stuff happens" reaction to post-war looting, his finessing of language regarding the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, his downplaying of the insurgency. Not to mention, as we have said, his general fingernails-on-the-chalkboard demeanor as the most insufferably patronizing member of the Bush Administration.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the drumbeat for Rummy's ouster sways the White House. Rumsfeld remains a good friend of Dick Cheney's -- that seems like a fun-loving duo, doesn't it? -- and Dubya has voiced his belief that you don't change horses midstream.

Then again, when the horse you've got is polluting the stream with turds the size of cinderblocks, maybe it's time for the glue factory.

For more on the Let's-Can-Rumsfeld wagon, check out Howard Kurtz's exhaustive Dec. 16 Washington Post column.