Republicans have small, smooth brains

Republicans have small, smooth brains. At least I think they must. How else could one explain their defense of Donald Rumsfeld? Rumsfeld has proven to wrong on virtually everything having to do with Iraq and the “war.” He was wrong about WMD’s, wrong about the relationship of Saddam to the terrorists. Wrong about Saddam having anything whatsoever to do with 9/11, wrong about how our troops would be greeted by the Iraqis, wrong about how many troops would be needed, wrong about the legality of torture, wrong about how much it would cost, wrong about how it could be paid for, wrong about the aftermath of the hostilities, wrong about the importance of “old Europe,” and is wrong about just who it is in Iraq that is resisting our attempt at empire building. In spite of this the White House maintains that he is doing “a great job.” Not content with this claim, Andrew Card, Bush’s Chief of Staff, has now announced that Rumsfeld is actually doing a “spectacular job.”

Republicans who claim they have no confidence in Rumsfeld, and who blame him for the lack of armor and other preparations, as well as his arrogance and unconcern for the troops, seem to also believe that he should not be replaced either in (1) the middle of a war, or (2) before the elections in Iraq. In other words, no matter how dismal a failure, no matter how terrible a disaster, no matter how many more innocent civilians will be killed, no matter how wrong-headed and incompetent he is, no matter how much torture or how bad the failures up until now, he has to be retained. To do otherwise might indicate that Bush made a mistake and we certainly can’t have that. The only people in the Bush Administration that go are those who try to retain some semblance of reality and truth.

Ironically enough, the only thing Rumsfeld seems to have been right about is the fact that a smaller and more mobile U.S. Army, dealing in “shock and awe,” could quickly defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Iraqi army. We were, in fact, remarkably successful in this. Of course we should not lose sight of the fact that we were basically shooting fish in a barrel and neither of those countries had any chance whatsoever of winning a “war” against the U.S. But what is most interesting about this is Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe’s claim that the problems in Iraq are/were actually Clinton’s fault because he downsized and reduced the military. So, according to this logic, Clinton’s army was unbelievably successful in doing what the army was supposed to do, but Clinton, four years ago, did not anticipate the problems of postwar Iraq. The minds of Republican Senators, especially those from southern states, do not work like ordinary minds. In fact, they do not seem to work at all.

And horror of horrors, MSNBC is apparently going to offer Tucker Carlson a prime time show of some kind. Carlson’s main claim to fame is that he wears nerdy bow ties (and probably a “rug”). He has been on Crossfire for years, seems to know absolutely nothing much about anything, and apparently draws his salary for just automatically ridiculing anything Democratic. He is, as Jon Stewart so insightfully observed, nothing but a partisan hack. Just what we need in the media, another mindless lying partisan hack. Rush Limbaugh comes to television.

I wish I could be more optimistic about the future. But at the moment, I can’t. I would like to think that some Congressperson or Senator, somewhere, sometime, somehow someway, feeling the pangs of conscience, would blow the lid off the whole rotten enterprise. But don’t hold your breath.