How Could I Forget About Rumsfeld?

Last week, I asked whether anyone was as good as Cheney when it comes to slinging total crap with such self-assurance. Yesterday, watching part of Rumsfeld's press conference, I was reminded why this man is definitely hall-of-fame material, and might even give the Veep a run for his championship title. For instance, when asked why the new benchmarks for Iraqi progress didn't include any formal evaluation process for success, Rumsfeld answered:

…I think there's an advantage in having [benchmarks] public because it's a declaration of your priorities and what you think you would like to accomplish. The risk of it is that someone will say: Oh my goodness, look at there, they missed it by a day or two or a week or something else, and fuss at you. Well, that's life. People fuss anyway.

With all due respect (read: none), if our problems in Iraq amounted to missing crucial strategic deadlines by "a day or two," then I don't think anyone would be fussing at all. The problem is that Iraq is going to hell, and that Rumsfeld is one of the chief architects of that descent. With a few exceptions, notable for their artificiality and divorced from those ever-present "facts on the ground," none of the important economic, political, or security objectives that would be required to stabilize the situation have been achieved.

Rumsfeld is acting like a kid who just trashed his school, but then pretends that everyone is really going to be mad at him because his term paper is "a day or two" late. Please.