Christian Leftist

Poor ol’ Rummy. He’s just not getting a break, is he? He signed up for absolute power, but all he gets is absolute chaos. To top it off, his office is only three downs down from the janitor’s. Now he knows how Colin Powell felt.

In the latest NYT article about the Secretary of Defense, Pentagon Memo Aims to Counter Rumsfeld Critics,General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tries to paint a rosier picture of the man five retired and active generals want to see resign. I’m willing to be reasonable when it comes to the criticism of GOP members, but Rumsfeld is the BIG excetion to that rule (Well, maybe him and John Ashcroft, who has faded in the twilight). Most of Rummy’s behavior, both verbal and otherwise, indicates a complete ineptitude so profound that it approaches archetypal Orwell-Meets-Dr.-Strangelove-trigger-happy images. Here’s a snippet/summary:

The memorandum begins by stating, “U.S. senior military leaders are involved to an unprecedented degree in every decision-making process in the Department of Defense.” It says Mr. Rumsfeld has had 139 meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff since the start of 2005 and 208 meetings with the senior field commanders.
Seeking to put the criticism of the relatively small number of retired generals into context, the e-mail message also notes that there are more than 8,000 active-duty and retired general officers alive today.
The message was released Friday by the Pentagon’s office of the Directorate for Programs and Community Relations and Public Liaison, but it was unclear who wrote it.

Wow. That’s a lot of meetings. I wonder how many trees his poor assistant kills transcribing all of the text he claims he never reads?

…So, that’s (139 meetings + 208 meetings) x (3 handmade flip-books for entertainment per meeting) x (150 mini-pages per flip-book) / (16 mini-pages per piece of paper) = 9,759.375 pp.

They must have really, really long filing cabinets at the DoD.