Donald Rumsfeld Is Mad As a Hatter

[Guest guest]

Or maybe we have about a 38% certifiably lunatic population who still

believe his crap.......

 

 

 

" We now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful

military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something? "

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/29101/

 

Donald Rumsfeld Is Mad As a Hatter

 

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted December 6, 2005.

 

 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is mad. No, I mean seriously ill.

Mentally ill. Demonstrably so.

 

I can't say whether or not he was mad from the start, but I can tell

you with some degree of certainty that he is now. And he's getting

worse. Each successive news conference he sounds more and more like

the character, Dr. Charles Montague, who was head of " The Place for

the Very, Very Nervous " in the 1977 Mel Brooks flick, High Anxiety.

 

Don got so nutty during his weekly news conference last week that

Joint Chiefs head, General Pace, had to reel him in; not once, but

twice. The first time was when Pace used the accepted term,

" insurgents, " to describe the indigenous fighters in Iraq.

 

Rumsfeld interrupted, waving both hands over his head, to announce

that over the weekend he had had an epiphany. We've been using the

wrong term entirely to describe the Iraqis killing our troops over

there, he pronounced from on high. They are not " insurgents, " they are

" Enemies of the Legally Elected Iraqi Government, " or EOLEIGs. (Guess

we know now why Donald never made it as a corporate jingle writer.)

 

Now ask yourself, what kind of person but a nut, would make such a

pronouncement at a time when American kids are being blown up by the

dozen each week? And to do so with such pompous grandiosity, on TV,

and to cynical, hard-boiled reporters! Only a madman, a person so

deeply confused in his own mind that he thinks his absurd ruling

actually is contributing to a solution.

 

What on earth was he thinking? Actually, nothing new. Renaming

fighters in Iraq has become a veritable hobby for Don. He's been

re-branding the Iraqi fighters since the day we arrived there. Before

the war even started he didn't even have a term for them because, he

assured us, there would be no opposition to a U.S. attack on their

country. But after Saddam was gone and U.S. troops started dying, Don

told the same TV cameras to pay them no attention because, he said

then, they were just a handful of " Dead-Enders " (D.E.'s).

 

As conditions in Rumsfeld's newly liberated Iraq deteriorated further,

he renamed them again. No longer Dead Enders, they were now " Foreign

Terrorist Fighters. " And better yet, he said, they had been reduced to

a rag-tag bunch that were " in their last throes. "

 

Once Rumsfeld was done revealing his renaming epiphany he gave the

microphone back to a clearly embarrassed General Pace. The general was

faced with the choice of joining his boss in Looneyland, or using the

now banned term, insurgents. Instead he said, Yeah, what he just said.

 

If Rumsfeld says such nutty things right on TV, you can imagine the

thoughts he shares with subordinates back in the privacy of his office

at the Pentagon. Where Yeah, what he just said becomes the day's

marching orders.

 

The second time General Pace had to reel Rumsfeld in was when Pace was

asked by reporters if U.S. troops in Iraq were supposed to step in and

stop Iraqi troops from abusing fellow Iraqis. Pace was in the process

of giving the right answer (Yes), when Don-in-the-Box popped up again.

" No, no that's not their job, " he corrected the general.

 

Pace had no choice. " Ah, well, yes sir, but if our troops are there

they are supposed to stop such behavior. "

 

The look on Rumsfeld's face was the same look parents get when they

tell their teenagers, " If your friends start drinking or using drugs

you leave that party and come straight home! " You know the look -- the

eyeballs rollup as the head jerks dismissively to one side.

 

From that look it was clear that Rumsfeld believes that, while U.S.

troops had the right to invade Iraq, topple its government and occupy

the country, they have no business telling Iraqis not to beat, torture

or kill their own folks. Not our job, he says. (Administration

vice-enabler, Dick Cheney, appears to agree.)

 

So we now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful

military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something? I

mean, if Bush insists on having a nut in this post, at least hire a

harmless nut. The world is full of them. He could find less nutty nuts

downtown in any major city. Pick one with less dangerous notions than

Don has. That way the weekly Pentagon news conferences would continue

being ever so entertaining, but fewer people would get killed.

 

It's time for someone to tell Donald Rumsfeld, " No more fruit cup for

you! "

 

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including " Inside Job:

The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, " which was nominated for a

Pulitzer.