It was just last week that the editorial board of the Washington Post abandoned any pretense of journalistic integrity with the publication of “A Good Leak.” Today, in the interest of not letting anyone push George Bush around, they’ve apparently abandoned their humanity. How else can you explain going from this:
…the defense secretary was directly responsible for the policy of abuse toward detainees…
…his self-defeating insistence on minimizing the number of troops; his resistance to recognizing and responding to emerging threats, such as the postwar looting and the Sunni insurgency…his slowness to acknowledge the emerging threat of Shiite militias and death squads last year.
To this:
In our view Mr. Rumsfeld’s failures should have led to his departure long ago. But he should not be driven out by a revolt of generals, retired or not.
…in the same editorial?
The editorial is harshly critical of the Secretary, and of Bush for not accepting Rumfeld’s previous offers to resign. The newspaper that “editorially has supported the war,” begins by calling Bush stubborn and states that Rumsfeld’s “criminal mistreatment of foreign detainees” has contributed to the current violence in Iraq. They list his many missteps before, during and since “Mission Accomplished.” They call it a “signal failure” that Bush has not held Rumsfeld accountable and opine that that lack of accountability no doubt led to the unprecedented public rebuke by retired Generals.
This editorial lays the blame for the current state in Iraq squarely at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld, but in the interest of:
…the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control —
…[Rumsfeld] should not be driven out by a revolt of generals, retired or not.
That’s right, he should stick it out…and George Bush must stand up to democratic principles and keep Rumsfeld on. Never mind that standing up for that principle means that the incompetent architect of a war that has killed nearly 2400 US military people and more than 30,000 Iraqis, will remain in charge. Of course the main concern about the Rumsfeld controversy is:
Now it is deepening the domestic political hole in which the president is mired…
Rather than decrying this “revolt” against Rumsfeld, perhaps the Washington Post should be more concerned about the soldiers mired in Iraq.
