War Hymns
I've just watched about all I could stand of George W. Bush's press conference announcing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Not surprisingly, he got a lot of questions about the implications of yesterday's elections, and started yammering about his desire to work with Democrats.
Yeah, right. Next thing he'll be telling us he wants to be "a uniter, not a divider," and usher in a "responsibility era." Day before yesterday, he was finishing up a campaign swing that focused on the argument that the Democratic Party was basically a terrorist front organization. And even in today's remarks, he couldn't stop himself from suggesting that anyone who questions his and Rumsfeld's sorry record on Iraq is undermining the troops and frightening the Iraqis.
As for the timing of the decision to finally let Rummy go, a couple of years too late, I'm sure we'll hear from right-wing chatterers that it couldn't happen before Election Day because it would have discouraged the conservative "base." If, God forbid, I were a conservative base voter, I'd be pretty damn insulted by the idea that Rumsfeld, who has done more to discredit Republican national security bona fides than anyone not named Dick Cheney, was one of my heroes. The real issue is that the administration needs to pretend it's rethinking Iraq before Democrats ride into Washington, take over congressional committee gavels, and start asking questions about Iraq that should have been asked by Congress a long time ago.
Rumsfeld's proposed replacement, former CIA chief Bob Gates, is currently president of Texas A&M University. Let me be the very first to suggest his replacement in College Station: my colleague The Moose. He'd love to return to his native Texas; his original strategy of joining the staff of Governor Kinky Friedman hasn't exactly worked out. And the timing's perfect: he could get out of the political arena on a high note, just after the humiliation of Karl Rove and the apotheosis of Joe Lieberman, and before John McCain has a chance to break his heart. Despite his yankeefied higher education in New York and Ann Arbor, the Moose is totally an Aggie Wannabee. I can attest to the fact that he knows every word of the Aggie War Hymn, and can sing it at a considerable decibal level.
So if anything really good is to come of the latest Bush maneuver, maybe this is it: A&M President Marshall Wittmann. To paraphrase the War Hymn:
Rummy's horns are sawed off
Rummy's horns are sawed off
Rummy's horns are sawed off
Short! A!
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