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Great critique today from TNR.com of Rusmfeld's pathetic response to the GI's questions about lack of armor and supplies in Iraq.

"[I]f you think about it," he said, "you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can [still] be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up." The sheer condescension of the reply was breath-taking. If you think about it? One imagines that Specialist Wilson has thought quite a bit about being blown up--and the other dozens of ways he might be killed in Iraq. And what exactly was Rumsfeld suggesting, anyway? That Wilson simply adopt a more philosophical attitude toward combat? That he turn to the old AA prayer and ask God for the serenity to accept the things he cannot change? Perhaps Rumsfeld could suggest that troops begin patrolling without helmets. After all, you can wear your helmet until the end of time--and still get shot in the chest.

From there it moves on to a thorough analysis of the myriad of ways in which Rummy botched both pre and post war planning. But hey... he's done a fabulous job, and he certainly doesn't want to retire, so let's give him another four years!

UPDATE: More from an editorial in today's WaPo:

Even more remarkably, he shifted all blame for what many believe to have been a woefully inadequate troop commitment. "The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control," he said. Out of the defense secretary's control? "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine," Mr. Rumsfeld explained. "But the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted." But reporting by Bob Woodward and others shows Mr. Rumsfeld ordering Gen. Tommy R. Franks to rewrite plans for Iraq to reduce the number of troops; the one general who said he thought more would be needed for postwar control, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, found himself unwanted in Mr. Rumsfeld's Pentagon.

There I go again, living in the real world. What am I thinking? History isn't reality, it's what those in power say it is. Right?

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