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Well now... I was planning on responding in full this evening to Rumsfeld's idiotic speech last night before the American Legion. In the span of a rather short speech, the man name dropped Hitler, dismissed coverage Abu Ghraib as "distortions and lies," lobbed "Blame America First" charges left and right, and blamed "bad actors" for quite literally all of the mistakes that have happened on his watch. So much for the military's 200+ year tradition of accountability flowing UP the chain of command....

So... I was going to respond in full, but it looks like Matthew Yglesias and Harry Reid have said everything that needs to be said.

First off, here's Matt guest-hosting over at TPM:

Rumsfeld is a buffoon. A punchline. A well-known liar. He and his bosses -- Bush and Cheney -- are running around the country trying to cite the failures of their own policies as a reason to entrust them with additional authority in order to continue and intensify those same failings. We're witnessing the bitter, bitter fruits of the Iraq War. Other nations learned that they must seek nuclear weapons as soon as possible to safeguard themselves from a newly trigger happy United States of America. Muslim opinion was sharply polarized against us. Iran and Syria were told that their cooperation against al-Qaeda was no longer needed because their governments would topple soon enough. A power vacuum was left on the streets of Baghdad that parties aligned with Iran have rushed to fill. The Arab-Israeli conflict was sidelined as something that would magically resolve itself once Saddam Hussein was out of the way. And America's allies were taught that our government was not to be relied upon -- that we operated with bad intelligence and initiated wars of choice without any real plans or ideas about how to cope with the aftermath.

That's how we got here. By listening to Bush. By listening to Cheney. By listening to Rumsfeld. The idea that we should keep on listening to them is absurd.

And then, this from Senator Harry Reid:

Secretary Rumsfeld’s reckless comments show why America is not as safe as it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to the war in Iraq. If there's one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it's Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to succeed. Under this Administration's watch, terror attacks have increased, Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin. We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong since the start of the Iraq War? Or, do we change course in Iraq and put in place new leadership that will put the safety of the American people ahead of partisan games? For the sake of the safety of this country, it is time to make a change.

As for me, my reading of Fiasco is nearly complete, and I'll be back with far far more by the end of the week.

UPDATE: Carpetbagger has a good point - as election day draws near, more and more Republicans have been joining the Democrats and a the majority of their fellow citizens in calling this war what it is - a disaster. And that trend is likely to accelerate over the next few months.

So I have to ask... If Rumsfeld believes that criticizing the war means "blaming America," and if a majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake, does that mean he believes a majority of Americans now "blame America"?

For the record, I don't blame America, and neither do most Americans. I blame Rumsfeld. And Cheney. And Bush. And I do so because I love this nation. What I hate is what they have done to it.