Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

The “Decider”
(cross-posted at firedoglake)

Well, Scott McClellan is gone, resigned. It was just flashed across MSNBC.
I guess the decider doesn’t make all decisions. But, hey, you can’t
win ‘em all. Besides, we all felt this one coming. It was either that
or get fired, right? Leaving on your own terms is always a better route. UPDATE: Tony Snow the possible replacement, according to Fox “News.” Maybe they're just trying to push it into happening.)

But let's back up. The “decider”? Who taught this guy to speak? I
know, I know, I should be used to it by now, but I'm just not. Neither are Joe
Gandelman, Digby
and Atrios, the source for today's
picture, and a host of others, who covered the story.

Crooks and Liars has the video if you missed Bush's
latest beauty.

“I hear the voices, and I read the front
page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is
best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”
– President George W. Bush

The decider hears “the voices.” Why does that not surprise me? Unfortunately,
it’s not the type of voices anyone should be listening to.

If Bush is the “decider,” he is also something else: the one responsible.
Now that he's put no distance whatsoever between himself and Donald Rumsfeld
we know one thing for sure. Everything that has happened, every plan that's
gone awry and every decision has been backed by the “decider.” Whatever
the Iraq war was a couple of days ago to the American people, today it belongs
to Bush. Of course, we've always known it. But there was also a feeling someone
else was pulling the strings, Deadeye, DoD, whomever. Now we know that only
Bush is in charge. He is the decider. No wonder he's going down.

One wonders, if Karl Rove were really at his game and Fitz wasn't giving Bush's
brain fits, if the Rovester would have allowed Bush to come out and back Rummy
so nakedly, on Good Friday, without a thought. Oh, right, Bush is the decider.
On the other hand, if Bush can't save Rummy, he can't save himself either. They're
tied together as one.

But it's Maureen Dowd, who never misses an opportunity to take an opportunity
to stereotype Democrats, who on this day at least, does the decider and his
DoD man in.

From behind the infernal wall of pay, I bring you an excerpt of Ms. Dowd today:

Asked why he twice offered to resign during the Abu
Ghraib prison abuse scandal but has not this time, Rummy smiled and replied,
“Oh, just call it idiosyncratic.”

Idiosyncratic, indeed, with Iraq in chaos, the military
riven and depleted, the president poleaxed, the Republican fortunes for the
midterm elections dwindling, and Republican lawmakers like Chuck Hagel questioning
Rummy's leadership and Democratic ones like Dick Durbin proposing a no-confidence
vote in the Senate.

The secretary made it sound as if the generals want
him to resign because he made reforms. But they really want him to resign
because he made gigantic, horrible, arrogant mistakes that will be taught
in history classes forever.

He suggested invading Iraq the day after 9/11. He didn't
want to invade Iraq because it was connected to 9/11. That was the part his
neocon aides at the Pentagon, Wolfie and Doug Feith, had to concoct. Rummy
wanted to invade Iraq because he thought it would be easy, compared with Iran
or North Korea, or compared with finding Osama. He could do it cheap and show
off his vaunted transformation of the military into a sleek, lean fighting
force.

Cloistered in a macho monastery with “The Decider”
(as W. calls himself), Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, Rummy didn't want to hear
dissent, or worries about Iraq, the tribes, the sects, the likelihood of insurgency
or civil war, the need for more troops and armor to quell postwar eruptions.

“He didn't worry about the culture in Iraq,”
said Bernard Trainor, the retired Marine general who is my former colleague
and the co-author of “Cobra II.” “He just wanted to show them
the front end of an M-1 tank. He could have been in Antarctica fighting penguins.
He didn't care, as long as he could send the message that you don't mess with
Hopalong Cassidy. He wanted to do to Saddam in the Middle East what he did
to Shinseki in the Pentagon, make him an example, say, 'I'm in charge, don't
mess with me.' ”

The stoic Gen. Eric Shinseki finally spoke to Newsweek,
conceding he had seen a former classmate wearing a cap emblazoned with “RIC
WAS RIGHT” at West Point last fall. He said only that the Pentagon had
“a lot of turmoil” before the invasion.

Just as with Vietnam, when L.B.J. and Robert McNamara
were running the war, or later, when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took
over, we now have leaders obsessed with not seeming weak, or losing face.
Their egos are feeding their delusions.

The
Decider Sticks With the Derider, by Maureen Dowd

The generals put a finer point on Rumsfeld needing to resign, leading Democrats
and the American people back to where it all began, back to the discussion of
getting out of Iraq.

Jack Murtha was right. He was talking to the generals and they were telling
him how they felt about Rumsfeld, but also about Iraq. We’ve known it
for months. The 37-year Marine Democratic war veteran was right all along. Hey,
but why listen to the military man who has heard it straight from the generals?
It’s Bush who is the decider.