First we got the Military Times Group, who is responsible for publishing the Army Times and all the other main military magazines, publishing a rare joint editorial on Monday. That editorial is saying “Rumsfeld must go”:
“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.”
That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.
But until recently, the “hard bruising” truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “mission accomplished,” the insurgency is “in its last throes,” and “back off,” we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.
Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.
While many will put this off as a political ploy (gee – guess the military is Democrats now), the author certain to say at the end that they do not care about the out-come of the elections on Tuesday. I am sure that the deadly month of October had a lot of bearing on the decision to go with this editorial.
Next we got the architects of the war coming out publicly and blasting the Bush administrations handling of the war and saying if they had it to do over, they would not (plus it is a great title – Neo Culpa):
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war’s neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
Those are all the big names that lead us into war. It looks like they have now cut and run on Bush.
So will this make any change? Highly doubtful. Remember – Bush said if Laura and Barney were his only supporters left he would still keep the current course. In other words, Bush has made himself an emperor and self-elected top authority on foreign policy. Actually of everything that has happened, that very line is the most indicting piece of evidence to impeach Bush. He has publicly said that he will do what he wants to do, it doesn’t matter who disagrees with him. That is very democratic of him.