Newsday (NY) editorial:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vprum073790884may07,0,7367602.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlinesThey all should go
It's not just Rumsfeld who's responsible for the misjudgments about Iraq; it's the whole defense and national-security team
May 7, 2004
The long knives are out for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the wake of the news about the abuse and torture of Iraqis detained at a notorious prison outside Baghdad, United States senators and even columnists for The New York Times are calling on President George W. Bush to give his defense secretary the heave-ho.
The reality is that, if Bush is going to clean house, it makes no sense to stop with Rumsfeld. Considering how the Bush administration has made a mess of the situation in Iraq - from the wrong intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the incredible lack of planning for the post-war situation to the entirely unnecessary alienation of allies - the whole national security team should be fired.
It's just not Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - and his deputy, Douglas Feith - it's also the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. They were wrong about the reasons for going to war; they were wrong about the danger of a terrorist attack before Sept. 11, 2001; they were wrong about how easy it would be to rebuild post-war Iraq, and they have been wrong about how Iraqis detained and imprisoned should be treated - not to mention denying U.S. citizens held in terrorism investigations their basic constitutional rights.
And we're not even talking here about the No. 1 honcho on every aspect of the war: Vice President Dick Cheney. He can't be fired, of course. But why does he have to be on the Republican ticket come November? Then again, the last president to shake up his government in a dramatic fashion was Jimmy Carter, and look where it got him. Once you take the top people out, there is only one person left to blame. (2 more paragraphs, see link above)
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