Fire Rumsfeld

The spouse and I are off to Ohio to spend time with loved ones from the heartland. We have family - a son, daughter-in-law, two grandsons and a granddaughter – and long time friends in the Columbus area, and we enjoy interacting with all of them in an effort to interpret life from the point of view of good folks outside the Beltway.

But before I go, I have to fire a couple of shots at celebrities: Don Rumsfeld and Rush Limbaugh.

I’ll begin with everybody’s pal, el Rushbo. Today, from the EIB - Excellence in Broadcasting - Headquarters, in Downtown Manhattan where he had set up to deliver his daily diatribe in the far north safety from Hurricane Ernesto that was threatening to pummel the EIB center in Miami, the Great One railed against the drive by media and the National Hurricane Center in Miami for outlandish alarmism. His attacks were unending on the fools in the media and the bureaucrats in the Weather Service for creating panic among the chickenhearted Floridians when the object of their affection was nothing more than “a rainstorm.” Can you believe it? Ernesto is nothing but rain?

To the bureaucrats and the drive byes, every piddling storm becomes a potential Katrina and the media spreads Chicken Little type fear and panic everywhere. Ernesto is nothing – not even a tropical storm, yet the drive byes and its information source, the hurricane experts of the (even the word is difficult for him to say without breaking into a sweat) government. These people have created panic causing all the fearful Florida folk to run whenever the word `h-------‘ is uttered. Can you believe it? Every girly man in Miami ran from nothing but a spot of rain.

Oh, I forgot to listen to his explanation of how he – the Great One – happened to be scared all the way to New York City by a shower. It must be disgust at the sight of bureaucrats and reporters fanning the flames of fear among the chicken hearted in Florida.

On to Don Rumsfeld! Don’s firing away with the Islamic Fascist jargon that’s catching on with the neocons and the other elements of the hard right as we approach the election. As I indicated in a posting some days ago, the label is not without some merit, and I applaud the guy or gal who thought it up. If there’s any word that’ll scare the hell out of everyone it’s `fascist’. Having found a great pre-election buzzword that will panic everyone in the Republican base, the neocons are compounding the fears of their army by charging that anyone for withdrawing from Iraq is `appeasing’ these fascists. How’s that for doubling down on your bets?

The neocons – and now Rummy – are saying that anyone not willing to stay the course in Iraq is ignorant of history and that they’ve forgotten the last time the Fascists were appeased. Great linkage, eh? For those few of you who don’t know, those are code words for letting Hitler have the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia without a fight in hopes that he wouldn’t ask for more. As all those, according to Don, who don’t know what happened then: World War II broke out then and there as a result of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Fuehrer.

I’ve never thought Rummy was likeable – I’m sure he doesn’t care in the least - nor do I think he’s above twisting words; he’s an expert at it, but I never thought he’d twist them to the point that he’d look like a fool. But in intimating that those opposed to staying the course in Iraq are appeasing somebody – whom or what I don’t know and can’t imagine – he’s shown that himself to be both a fool and a charlatan.

To appease is to pacify by buying off parties to a disagreement. The American public is not for appeasing anyone. The people recognize that a huge blunder was made by our leaders when they attacked Iraq under false conditions. There were no weapons of mass destruction threatening us or our allies in the region, and there was never any cooperation between Saddam’s government and al Qaeda in world terror. The war was an act of hubris by George Bush and his advisors, and they are twisting in the wind unable to get away from it.

More than twenty-six hundred American servicemen and women have died over a false premise. Twenty thousand troops have been wounded; among these, a huge number has been horribly maimed. $300 billion has been wasted and the long term outlook is for a total approaching $2 trillion of our national treasure. More than 40,000 Iraqis have been killed and tens of thousands more are homeless.

Question for George Bush and Don Rumsfeld – just who are we appeasing? NO ONE, that’s who. Fire Don now! This is the worst blow of the war so far. The presidency is failed and they want us to stay the course. Give me a break!

Had enough? Vote Democrat!

Blog on!

Wild Bill

P.S. I’ll be back on duty on Thursday next.