Ding Dong the Don is Gone ! ! !

The indefensible Neocon Don is gone
Ding Ding
The Neocon Don is Gone!

Bush says Rumsfeld to step down

31 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the face of U.S. war policy, will step down after Democrats' rode Americans' anger over
Iraq to victory in Tuesday's election, senior defense and administration officials said on Wednesday.

I just heard it in the car on N.P.R. at lunch, then got a friendly email note as soon as I returned to my desk.

It's kinda funny that there really can't be any doubt that Rummy did indeed resign, and wasn't actually shoved aside with the requirement that he just says it was his own idea. As my work partner, K-Dog, the guy with the Stinging Sam pic from yesterday, reminded me when I told him about this, the Don has proferred his resignation at least once or twice over the past few years.

Bush, despite Rumsfeld's resignation, appears to still be "staying the course."

[NPR Link] Following the dramatic victories by Democrats, President Bush announced Wednesday the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the face of U.S. war policy and a lightning rod for critics worldwide.

"I recognize that many Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made" in Iraq, President Bush said at a news conference. "Yet I also believe most Americans -- and leaders here in Washington from both political parties -- understand we cannot accept defeat."

Which once more takes us right back to the provocative, and so far elusive, question of just how do we define the opposite of defeat. What, Mr Bush, would realistically and substantially entail a victory in a war which we should have Never initiated? How is anything other than defeat possible when our stated goals are themselves impossible to attain, because they naught other than delusional (to be kind) fabrications of your ideological brethren?

Perhaps the arrival of a new majority in the US House of Representatives will, if not exactly answer those questions in precisely the way they're currently formulated, at least encourage the formulation of a plan to withdraw from our current course of action in Iraq.

If this new Congress can succeed in that most economically and morally laudable endeavour, then perhaps we will be able to reevaluate our nation's priorities and, most importantly to my way of thinking about the world our species has created for ourselves, what precisely we consider to be our prerogatives in the Middle East.

Ding Ding
The Neocon Don is Gooooone!