Rummy's back!

And in fine form. He's testifying in front of the House hearing on Pat Tillman's death, and he answered Rep. Elijah Cummings' question (something like what the hell happened) was, (paraphrasing), "Well, you know, there are lots of investigations all the time, I mean, heck, how could everyone know everything?"

Someday when I grow up to be a real blogger I'll figure out how to get exact quotes while listening to CSPAN 3 on the net. In the meantime, here's where all the excitement is happening...

RUMMY OUT

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stepped down!

Apparently this was in the works for a few days (obviously, because Bush has already secured his replacement in Former CIA chief Robert Gates). I don't know if we can really gloat, but wow. I was expecting to take the House, I was hoping for the Senate, but I was not expecting to topple Rummy in the process. Forget those who say midterms don't mean anything.

Thank you for voting.

Suing Rumsfeld

[Note: this post has been updated with clearer details.]

A former US Navy SEAL is filming a documentary in a faraway land about an ancient civilization, the kind of thing you watch at 3am on the History Channel. He is arrested in that country because the yahoo policemen that pull over the taxi in which he was riding one day discover washing-machine timers, which bomb-makers can use as timing devices. He is thrown in prison and held without counsel or hearing for 55 days, until his family makes a big enough stink by suing the government that is holding him. Suddenly, law enforcement decides that the former US Navy SEAL is not, after all, what they were calling an "imminent security threat" [CNN.com] and releases him, a spokesman crowing that this showed "the effectiveness of our detainee review process."

A shocking, shocking story. We should find those f*&%kers and bomb them.

Oh, wait, it was us.

The former US Navy SEAL in question is an American named Cyrus Kar. He is in his mid-40s, a part-time college professor, and is of Iranian descent. He was in Iraq making "a documentary film about Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who wrote the world's first human rights charter." [CNN.com] Oh, the irony, it would make a great documentary. But my sarcasm digresses me. He was originally pulled over by Iraqi police. When he asked to contact the US Embassy, he was instead turned over to the US Military, who put him in one of their Iraqi prisons for 55 days.

I read about this on CNN.com, but a quick Google search of Cyrus Kar yields even more details from sites all over the web. (Would it surprise you to know that Bill O'Reilly-- who thinks that all film-makers are pinkos, appartently-- decried Kar as a "lefty" who is getting "legitimacy" by having his story covered by the mainstream press? And how does making a documentary film about ancient civilizations make you a Hollywood liberal?) The more shocking details of his treatment by US soldiers, even after explaining repeatedly that he was an Armed Services vet, include having his head slammed into a concrete wall.

And let us not forget that the FBI also raided his Los Angeles home and searched it, after they had determined that whatever they found in that cab was the cabbie's, and they continued to hold him for nearly seven weeks after that, despite having cleared him of suspicion. Go down into your storm cellar, have your kids bring you food twice a day, and stay there for seven weeks and tell me that's no big deal.

So, now he is suing Donald Rumsfeld. "In addition to Rumsfeld, the defendants include Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commanding general of the multinational forces in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. William H. Brandenburg, who was in charge of detainee operations in Iraq at the time of Kar's detention." [CNN.com]

Well, the administration, using their news minions at FOX News, is going to jump all over this guy and rip him to pieces, like they did Cindy Sheehan and, well, anyone that gets in their way at all.

But it will be very hard to deny the charges when the person you detained and treated questionably is a former US Navy SEAL, and a film-maker. (They will deny them, and they might even make it look easy, but it's going to be tricky.)

I wonder if the judge can award that Rummy has to give up that smarmy smirk as part of the damages.

Rummy's Officer Trap

There has developed in the public discussion regarding the denouncement of Secretary Rumsfeld by retired officers a paradox that no one seems to address.

1. Retired officers are saying Rummy messed this up from start to finish (ok, that's a simplification).

2. The common criticism of these officers is one of two:
a. Why didn't you say something at the time? (i.e., it must not have bothered you then)
b. You're retired, what do you know? (i.e., you're not here now so you don't really know what's going on)

3. People from the military (whether they are experts familiar with military culture, the retired officers themeselves, and even current Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace) explain that if you don't like an "order" (by which I mean the handling of a situation by anyone above you) your choice is to either suddenly get behind it and carry it out, or retire.

So you don't like Operation XYZ, and you try to tell your COs that, politely and saying, "With all due respect..." a lot, but in the end they are going with Operation XYZ. They tell you, "Either shut up and do it, or retire and say whatever you want." So because you have a high moral character and can't leak the news or lead your men into disaster, you retire. Then you stand up and publicly say what you believe, and the Pentagon responds, "Well, you weren't publicly complaining at the time, so you must have been fine with it, and besides, you're out of the loop now so what do you know?"

Does anyone else think that is patently unfair? Your bosses give you an option and then attack you for taking it?