Home of the Brave

Five years ago today, though I didn't know it at the time, my best friend's mother died in the Pentagon. I had just retired from the Navy, and spent all day watching the live coverage of the attacks and their aftermath. Like most Americans, I was frightened and angry.

I was heartened when U.S. troops went into Afghanistan and, for a time, seemed to have driven out the Taliban and helped to establish a democratic form of government in that country.

CNN's Anderson Cooper was reporting this morning on a 9/11 memorial ceremony being conducted by U.S. troops in Afghanistan when a rocket attack erupted. Cooper and the troops had to run for cover, and CNN cut back to Soledad O'Brian in the anchor studio.

I was doubtful about the invasion of Iraq, but at the time believed my President and other political leaders who told me that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program and that he had been connected to the 9/11 attacks. I was proud of our troops when Hussein's statue in Baghdad came tumbling down. It was a year later that we discovered the scene had been staged by a U.S. Army psychological operations unit.

We know now that Hussein had no WMD and was not connected to the 9/11 attacks. We also know that the seemingly endless insurgency and civil war in Iraq was the direct result of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's refusal to plan for a post-combat phase to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We also know that the policy to invade Iraq was formulated in the late 90s by the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, whose membership included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and other notables in the George W. Bush administration.

In today's Washington Post, Thomas E. Ricks tells us of the grim situation in Iraq's Anbar province.

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western al Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there…

…One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically--and that's where wars are won and lost…"

For five years, our leaders have misled us. They have misused our magnificent military and trampled on our cherished Constitution.

CNN just showed footage of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, two of the chief architects of America's post-9/11 deconstruction, singing Battle Hymn of the Republic at a ceremony in Washington D.C. I feel ill.

We have much to mourn this September 11th, not the least of which is the dramatic decline of our country's standing in the world. But I think it's vital to remember that America is more than the sum of its politicians--much more.

America no doubt means something to every individual citizen. A CNN poll taken this morning indicates that most American's feel that things will never be the same in the post-9/11 world. That may be. But I also think we have an opportunity to make our country a better place than it was before. How can we, as individual citizens, do that?

The formula may be this simple. Give a hoot about your fellow human beings. Read. Think. Vote. And above all, do not succumb to the politics of fear. America is the home of the brave, remember?

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Dead Skunks, Open Sores, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

--Mark Twain

I had decided to spare myself the aggravation of watching Vice President Dick Cheney on Tim Russert's program this morning, but I caved. Cheney has that unique "dead skunk" gravitas that makes him horrible to watch but oh so difficult to look away from.

Cheney has been called "Doctor Doom." He reminds me more of a few other comic book villains. Depending on his demeanor of the moment, he resembles The Penguin, The Thing or The Kingpin. And he showed all those sides of his personality on Meet the Press this morning.

Much of his rhetoric was about how much "progress" has been made in the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. If Iraq and Afghanistan are Cheney's idea of progress, I'd hate to see what he considers abject defeat.

Russert has taken a lot of heat lately--much of it over at Huffington Post--for being a doormat for the neoconservatives, letting them broadcast their talking points without pushing back. My first impression of today's interview is that Tim did a fairly darn good job of holding Cheney's nose to the candle.

At one point, Russert interrupted the Vice President's rant on Iraq and stated the question I've been begging to hear the mainstream media ask for over a year.

"What is 'victory,' what is 'staying the course,' what is 'winning?'" Russert asked.

Cheney gave a rambling response that didn't answer the question, something that has become a hallmark of the Bush administration.

By the end of the interview, Cheney took to hiding behind "I can't answer that" evasions based on legal and security reasons. He smirked and scowled. He made wild predictions about the November elections. He got downright to the point where he looked and sounded like he sensed he'd been taken down on national television. You know that look politicians and lawyers get sometimes when they know they've been exposed as malarkey vendors? That half smile, half cry-face that says, "Okay, I guess the jig's up?" That's what I thought I saw on Cheney's face at the end of his interview. I hope the rest of the country saw it too.

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Like Mark Twain, I often wonder if the neocons in the Bush administration believe their own gibberish or if they're just putting us on for the sake of holding power. Right now, I'm convinced that young Mister Bush himself is intellectually incapable of discerning fact from Rovewellian fiction. But based on Cheney's performance today on Meet the Press, I believe that he knows darn good and well that he's full of monkeyshines, and that he's catching on to the fact that most Americans know darn good and well that he's full of it too.

Former National Security Advisor and current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is another matter. I think she's somewhere in between Bush and Cheney. On Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, she displayed that Microsoft Windows hourglass look you've seen on her face so often in the past few years. She says what she's been programmed to say, but her eyes tell you that somewhere in her subconscious she knows that what she's saying is false. She has an internal checksum error that's about to turn into a system crash, but she doesn't have the luxury of being able to stop and reboot--she's already too many ticks committed into the neoconservatives' time bomb.

Condi was never a real driver of the Bush administration's policy agenda. She was brought on board the team to be part of Dubya's office harem--a workout partner and a foreign affairs tutor. "Iraq is the country on the left of that little water thingie. Iran is the one on the right. That group of countries to the right of the bigger water thingie is Europe. To the left, on the other side of the even bigger water thingie, is Asia. That's where those little Chinese people live."

Missing the Point

The Bush administration's conjuring of bogeymen, evildoers and mushroom clouds masks the essential failure of its foreign policy. America's military misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed. Capitalizing on those failures, China, Russia and Iran are forming an energy coalition that threatens to take down the U.S. dominance of global affairs. I think Dick Cheney understands this, and that's why he goes so far out of his way to avoid talking about it. I don't think Condi has a clue what's really going on. She's too busy appearing on Sunday talk shows and trying to teach Mister Bush how to pronounce "Ahmadinejad." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his kiss-up generals have screwed up the war on terror so badly that Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz combined couldn't fix their foibles.

If the Democrats get control of one or both houses of Congress come November, they'll have a tough road to hoe--the road to ruin, which the Bush administration has taken this country so far down that we may never be able to get back to the point we were at in the year 2000.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Sunday Drive By

I'm debating whether I'll be able to watch the Dick Cheney interview on this mornings Meet the Press. It might be worth watching just to see how insulting Cheney is to all the administration's critics, whose moral and intellectually clarity he questions, who he calls a traitor, etc. He may unveil a new talking point or two. I'd hate to miss that. It could be fun to see how often Tim Russert refuses to push back when Cheney talks nonsense. (Then again, it might be hard to keep count.)

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The New York Times has a pair of interesting articles this morning. David Johnston reveals information about the CIA secret prison and interrogation system. It's a pretty good insight on how the program worked, and gives compelling details on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured after 9/11. Zubdayah apparently gave the C.I.A. some interesting information about American terror suspect Jose Padilla.

Mr. Zubaydah dismissed Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far-fetched. He told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.

Padilla, you'll recall, is the American citizen whom the Bush administration sought to deny access to the courts by labeling his as an enemy combatant.

Also in the Times Adam Nagourney tells us the GOP has lined up behind Senator Lincoln Chafee to block a challenge to his Rhode Island primary nomination. They fear his Republican opponent, Stephen Laffey, is to conservative to win the general election. It's a sign of the times when the Republicans back a liberal candidate in hopes of maintaining its majority in the Senate. Brian Nick, communications director for the Republican Senate campaign committee, says that if Laffey wins the primary, the party will cede the Rhode Island senate seat to the Democrats. Laffey is apparently so far behind in the general election polls it would be a waste of money to back him.

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Well, here's Cheney on Russert's show. Guess I'll have to watch.

Much Ado About 9/11

The much debated Path to 9/11 ABC/Disney propaganda-drama shouldn't really make a spit's bit of difference in the American political scene, or have any effect at all on the November elections. The autistic right already blames the Clinton administration for all the sins of the Bush administration, and the rest of the world already knows the mini-series is a load of Orwellian brainwash.

If anything, Path to 9/11 illustrates how pathetically frightened the GOP is of losing Congress, and losing its mandate for the sinister neoconservative agenda. It also shows the extent to which the big money right has corrupted the big media.

But we already knew those things.

We also know that blaming any and every available scapegoat for its failures is standard operating procedure for the Bush administration.

We also know that whatever miscues Clinton may or may not have made regarding Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, he hasn't been president for over five years--five years that seen America go from being the world's leader to the world's biggest two faced bully.

Bill Clinton didn't make young Mister Bush a mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, solipsistic moron. Nor is it Clinton's fault that Dick Cheney has been in the last throes of dementia for at least seven years, or that Donald Rumsfeld couldn't find his rump with a map, a flashlight and help from all of his four star suck ups.

It's Not Their Fault

If we really want to point a finger at who caused our Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda woes, we need look no further back than Ronald Reagan, who propped up al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And oh, by the way, it was Reagan who backed Saddam Hussein during the eight year long Iran-Iraq War. And it was during the period when Reagan was supporting Iraq that members of his administration sold weapons to Iran to help fund the anti-communist Contra organization in Nicaragua. In a White House press conference on March 4, 1987, Reagan admitted that his Vice President, George H.W. Bush, had known about the sale of arms to Iran.

The Iran-Contra affair was investigated by the Reagan appointed Tower Commission, which limited its criticism of Bush the elder. Many Reagan administration critics viewed the Tower Commission and its report as a political stunt .

Well, we could go on and on about who inherited what disaster from whom, and it wouldn't make much difference. The bottom line is that what happens on your watch is your responsibility, especially when it's five years into your watch. By the Bush administration's Rovewellian dog whistle rhetoric, everything they've bollixed up is the fault of Adam and Eve.

How long before we hear young Mister Bush say, "Hey, I'm not the one who ate that dadgum apple?"

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Bush and the Wooly Bully Pulpit

Young Mister Bush gave his fourth speech on terror yesterday morning in Atlanta Georgia. It was both terrifying and terrible. I'm starting to think the guy actually believes his own plop.

He opened his speech with "Okay, here we go," presumably the only unscripted moment in his appearance before southern GOP supporters. The rest of his address was an unmemorable rehash of standard neo-mantras, but one statement caught my attention-- Bush's repetition of the latest talking point on Iraq that's been credited to John Abizaid, the four-star Army general in charge of Central Command: "If we leave, they will follow us." This bit of Orwellian twitticism begs two basic questions: who are "they" and how will they follow us?

"They," for the most part, are tribal and religious extremists who exert more effort fighting and terrorizing each other than they spend opposing U.S. occupation forces. Now, a key assumption in the "they will follow us" philosophy is that if we leave, they will stop fighting each other. They'd have to, wouldn't they, if they wanted to follow us back to America?

But wait a second. Hasn't most of the recent justification for staying in Iraq been that we need to stick around until they stop fighting each other? If we stick around until they stop fighting each other, though, won't they, like, start fighting us again? Wouldn't it be better if, when they stop fighting each other, we weren't around?

Let's let that issue go for now and focus on the more important question--how are "they" going to follow us? Will they hide themselves in our troops' luggage? Will they all pile into those cargo planes in bin Laden's gigantic air force, or onto the ships of his mighty naval armada? Oh, wait. Bin Laden doesn't have an air force or a navy, does he? Neither does Iraq. Iran has an air force and a navy, but they aren't big enough to bring all those fighting Iraqis across the ocean to attack America. Come to think of it, nobody--including China and Russia--has an air force or navy big enough to do something like that.

Like virtually all of the Bush administration's pro-Iraq War rhetoric, "If we leave, they will follow us" is fear and hatred inspiring nonsense. "They" won't follow us because they can't follow us.

Playing to His Strength

Remarking on the Bush administration's last ditch mid-term GOP election strategy, former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton told the New York Times “Look, they have won two elections on the basis of terrorism, and that’s the president’s strongest position. And he’s playing to his strength.’’

If terrorism is Bush's strength, red-hot chili peppers are a cure for hemorrhoids. Iraq is a disaster, Afghanistan is a disaster, the U.S. backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a disaster, and Hurricane Katrina proved that Homeland Security can't handle a disaster.

The administration makes repeated faulty comparisons of the war on terror and World War II. If Bush and his pals had been in charge when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, America would have invaded Mexico and Donald Rumsfeld would have referred to Hitler as a "dead ender." Dick Cheney would have said the Nazis were in their "last throes" while the Luftwaffe bombed Saint Louis, Missouri. "I think the Lutherano-fascists are losing," young Mister Bush would have said. "That's why they're still kicking our ass. The important thing to remember is that if we withdraw from Mexico, we'll show the axis of evil doers that we've lost our resolve."

Good God. Porky Pig and the rest of the Loony Tunes crowd could do a better job on the war against terror than Bush and his neo-conmen. And between the pig and the chimp, the pig's a better public speaker.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Breaking Rumor...

I just heard through a back channel source that John Bolton's nomination is being pulled. I'll let you know more as soon as I hear more.


Jeff

UPDATE:

This from Reuters, posted at 10:20 am today:

epublicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday scrubbed a planned vote on President George W. Bush's bid to keep John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, did not explain why the vote on whether to send Bolton's nomination to the full Senate was removed from the day's agenda and did not say if or when it would be taken up again.

Rummy and the American Legion of Lemmings (Part II)

The American Legion, 2.7 million members strong, is the largest of America's veterans' service organizations. The Legion does a lot of good things for U.S. war veterans, not the least of which is its congressional lobbing efforts on behalf of Veterans Administration funding. But the Legion is also an ultraconservative political and social activist group, one that promotes policies and agendas that have little to do with veterans' rights.

The American Legion did not evolve into a tool of conservative causes over a period of time. Formed in 1919, one of its first actions was to attack the headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) headquarters in Centralia, Washington on Armistice Day as part of the effort to squash the organized labor movement in America. Five Legion members were killed in the raid. In revenge, Legionnaires formed lynch mobs and conducted door-to-door searches for IWW members and sympathizers. IWW organizer Wesley Everest was tortured, castrated, and hung by his neck from a bridge.

Today's Legion is nowhere near that violent, but its right wing philosophical bent is as evident as ever, as witnessed by the neoconservative circus they sponsored last week in Salt Lake City, Utah at which George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld were keynote speakers.

"For God and Country" and War without End, Amen

The preamble to the American Legion's TEXT constitution begins with the motto "For God and Country," and pledges the organization to "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America" and "to foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism." The Legion's idea of upholding the U.S. Constitution reflects an interpretation of that document that matches Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's view of it--an interpretation that conveniently supports one hundred percent neoconservatism.

One of the best examples of the Legion's adherence to the Karl Rove propaganda playbook is its Resolution 169 titled "The War on Terrorism: A Guide to Building Public Awareness" that the Legion adopted during its 2005 convention in Hawaii.

In his introductory letter to the resolution, Legion commander Thomas L. Bock ran through the entire menu of neoconservative talking points. You can't separate the war in Iraq from the war on terror, and you can't separate support for the troops from support for the war.

Bock also tells his Vietnam era membership to remember how war protestors--and by inference the media that encouraged opposition to the war--aided the enemy and led to American defeat in that conflict. This is the most cynical and dishonest propaganda ploy in the pro-war right's bag of cheap tricks. The media and the war protestors didn't lose the Vietnam Conflict. Vietnam was lost by bad politicians and bad generals who started a bad war on bad pretexts and ran it badly for over a decade.

Today, the American Legion is abetting the same line of horse feathers to support the Bush administration and its agendas and policies. It's not the fault of young Mister Bush or old Messrs Cheney and Rumsfeld or any of the rest of the bad men of the neoconservative cabal that America's misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have put our ship of state bow down in the water. It's those pesky old liberal reporters, and the likes of that wicked old Cindy Sheehan that don't know how to practice their rights to freedom of speech in a "responsible" manner.

According to Resolution 169, Iraq War protestors "are not only causing additional pain and anguish to America’s heroes, they are also encouraging the enemy, thereby lengthening the war."

War protestors who want the war to stop are lengthening the war? Come on, American Legion.

Proposition 169 acknowledges the right of war protestors to speak out, but admonishes them to limit their activities to things like writing letters to their local newspapers, e-mailing their representatives in Congress, and voting against political candidates whose stances on the war they find objectionable. In other words, anyone who disagrees with the administration's policies and war strategies should feel free to voice their opinions as long as they do so in a way that no one can hear them.

And that fed directly into Donald Rumsfeld's speech at the 2006 Legion convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he accused Iraq War critics of "moral" and "intellectual" confusion.

If there's any moral or intellectual confusion going on in this country, it's occurring at the level of the federal government that Rumsfeld occupies and in neoconservative echo chamber pot organizations like the American Legion that support the morally and intellectually bankrupt Bush regime.

As a rule, I don't like to paint all individuals in an organization with the same brush, but in the case of the American Legion I'll make an exception. Legionnaires typify the mindless right. They're by and large a bunch of ex-G.I. working class stiffs who have bought into the illusion that being good little soldiers and good little Republicans makes them part of the ruling class. But the sad truth is that they're just another band of brothers sitting in the back of the bus.

The American Legion has every right to exist, and every right to take whatever political stances it cares to take. But as a retired military veteran, I find its very existence offensive. I didn't spend the prime of my adult life defending the constitution to sit by idly and watch the key players in and around the Bush administration wipe their feet on it, or to remain silent as a self-styled "veterans' service organization" actively helps them do it.

The American Legion's "God and Country" dogma is a key component of the neoconservative agenda to turn the "land of the free" into the "land of the lemmings." No amount of support for community projects or amateur baseball can justify or forgive the Legion's role in driving the United States' government system toward a militaristic, theocratic oligarchy.

And Legionnaires who insist on adhering to the red, white and blue brainwash that the likes of Thomas L. Bock pours down their throats by the pitcher may want to pay heed to Samuel Johnson's admonition that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Revoltin' Bolton

As if we needed further proof that the Bush compliant GOP doesn't want diplomacy to work…

Reuters reports that Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee want to keep John Bolton on as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, you'll recall, received a recess appointment to his present post from young Mister Bush back in August of 2005 after Senate Democrats blocked a final confirmation vote on his nomination.

The Bush administration wants Bolton confirmed now. A confirmation would keep Bolton in the UN for the remainder of Mister Bush's term as president.

Reuters says that "About 60 retired diplomats who served in Republican and Democratic administrations signed letters to Foreign Relations Committee members calling Bolton unfit to keep the job and urging his rejection."

The diplomats, who also opposed Bolton's original nomination, said in their letter that Bolton's conduct to date as UN ambassador "has confirmed our misgivings about his probable ineffectiveness and his tendency to alienate others."

In other words, Bolton is an obnoxious, bullying jerk--which makes him the Bush GOP's ideal choice for a key diplomatic position.

As a member of the Project for the New American Century, Bolton championed the policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power through military force. During his first job in the Bush administration as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Bolton helped fellow PNACer Dick Cheney cook the WMD intelligence on Iraq while letting Korea's development of nuclear weapons slip under the radar.

And this is the guy who presently handles the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program in the UN, who insists that Iran has ambitions to possess nuclear weapons though Iran claims it only wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful energy purposes, which the UN Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty defines as an "inalienable right."

The neocons in the White House want war with Iran. What better way to ensure that happens than to keep John Bolton in charge of the UN diplomatic process?

Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island) is the lone Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee who hasn't decided to back Bolton's nomination. Let's hope his decision isn't influenced by fear of further insults from Ann Coulter.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Rummy and the American Legion of Lemmings (Part I)

Every six months or so the American Legion sends me a letter asking why I haven't joined yet. Last week, at its annual convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Legion answered its own question.

It's bad enough that the Bush administration abuses its authority at every opportunity to use active duty troops as a Leni Riefenstahl style backdrop for its political rallies. The military, constitutionally under young Mister Bush's command, has no other choice but to play along. But for a so-called "veterans' service organization" to volunteer itself as a wall in the neoconservative GOP echo chamber is a particularly offensive piece of Rovewellianism.

The keynote speaker list, as you probably know, included not one, not two, but three heavy hitters in the administration. Well, call it two heavy hitters plus Condi Rice. Okay, call it one heavy hitter plus Rice and young Mister Bush himself. As heinous as the addresses given by Condi and Dubya were, they were downright palatable compared to the nose whistle recital that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave. The major hue and cry over Rumsfeld's speech was how he managed to insult the intellectual and moral clarity of the majority of Americans who now believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. I was more struck by how, once again, Rumsfeld's remarks proved just how ill suited he is for the job he presently holds.

From the sound of his warfare analogies, Rumsfeld seems to think he's fighting Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy all over again. That goes a long way in explaining how badly he's screwed up the war he's actually fighting now. But then again, Rummy and the rest of the inner neo-circle never have been all that good at making sense.

They insist on blaming their failures on the "new" nature of the so-called war on terror--but that doesn’t keep them from comparing their "new" kind of war to the "old" kind of war whenever they find it convenient to do so. Rummy and his neo-cronies tell us that this kind of war is "new" because it involves non-nation state entities. They also castigate their critics for not having learned the "lessons of history." But they either forget or neglect to mention that America's history is chock full of wars against non-state entities--Barbary pirates, Mexican banditos, Indian tribes, rebels, insurgents, terrorists, guerillas and all other sorts of evil doers. They also neglect to mention that, with the notable exception of Vietnam, their predecessors who fought the old kind of new wars were a darn sight more successful than they have been at fighting this new new kind of war.

You'd think that a smart guy like Rummy would have learned from the historic lessons of America's old new kind of wars in the course of fighting his new new kind of war, but that would be too much like Rummy admitting that history is smarter than he is. You also might think that Rummy would realize he failed to learn the same historic lessons that Vietnam era Secretary of State Robert McNamara failed to learn. But admitting that would be too much like Rummy admitting he was--and still is--wrong.

Rumsfeld and McNamara are running neck and neck for the Worst U.S. Cabinet Secretary Ever title. Rumsfeld deserves a lions share of the blame for driving America to the Project for the New American Century's catastrophic policy of toppling Saddam Hussein through military force. But as Bush the Younger's second in command of the military, he is singularly responsible for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and for fumbling the overall war on terrorism.

But Rumsfeld has done far more damage than that. His hands-on management of the wars he helped to create has shown the "best trained, best equipped" armed force in the history of humanity to be an all but impotent tool of U.S. national power. Despite great expense of human life and national treasure, America's military is unable to decisively defeat an enemy that has no army, navy, air force, Halliburton or USO. Objective future historians will point to Rumsfeld as one of the key figures who squandered the power the United States had accumulated at the end of a decades-long Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Incredibly, ironically and tragically, Rumsfeld is still at the helm of neoconservative America's misguided, warfare-centric foreign policies, and is likely to stay in that position as long as George II sits on the throne. From the sound of Rummy's remarks to the American Legion Convention, there's no reason to think he's about to start learning from his own mistakes either, and well, why should he? He's an old man. Unlike most of the rest of us, he won't have to pay the price for his mistakes.

So, a sensible, concerned American citizen might ask, what sort of "veterans' service organization" would invite a guy like Rumsfeld to be a keynote speaker at its annual convention?

(Next: the band of brothers at the back of the bus)

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

On Rummy from the Road

A blast from last April on Rummy over at ePluribus. When I get home, I'll have a few choice things to say about the American Legion's new role as part of the Carl Rove election strategy team.