<box width="140px" align="left"> <img align="center" src="{att_thumb}/20041209_rumsfeld_lg.jpg"> <div class="detail" style="text-align: center">Rummy performs black magic on the voices of dissent</div> </box> If everybody's gotta be right some time, there's a man who's <i>long</i> past due. He's invincible; bulletproof; he can do no wrong; he's the second coming. That this guy is still employed in any form whatsoever is a historical/cultural/social curiousity that will be studied millenia from now when our relatives of the future look back on this period of human existence with the same pity that we have in regarding our own ancestors before they came down out of the trees. That he still has the same job, and, in fact, is continually evaluated as doing a spectacular job, is even more astounding. A true testament to the power of DoubleSpeak (TM). Recently, he was interviewed (read "grilled") by most-likely-hand-selected members of the United States military forces. Though their questions were quite pointed and would have been embarassing if posed to a person with a shred of human decency and compassion whatsoever, I still suspect they were hand-picked because of the general lack of paint-peeling curses and the fact that no attempts were made on his life. <box title="Stop-loss" align="right" width="200px" style="margin-left: 1em"><n>*Stop-loss programs are another way of saying that soldiers can't go home when their contract is up. They have been conscripted into the Army without even the benefit of having been plied with rum and whores as even the British Navy had the decency of doing when <i>their</i> Empire ruled the planet.</n></box> His attitude, as you would expect if you have an familiarity with his press conference "style" (I use the word in the same way that I would say that Torquemada had a "flair" for interviewing), was condescending, non-forthcoming and generally information-poor. He spoke of the stop-loss program* as if it were in the same league as the program that gives milk to school children; as if the fact that it has a name makes it anything other than a moral outrage perpetrated by a nation on its own citizens. From <a href="http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5393255" source="SwissInfo">U.S. troops slam Rumsfeld over shortages</a>, we hear that <iq>it's a fact of life for troops during war because it help[s] maintain "cohesion" for units needed on the battlefield.</iq> and that <iq>[i]t's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new, it's been well understood [by soldiers]</iq>. He doesn't care. Just the fuck up and sit the fuck down and die for his cause like the lower-class, uneducated cannon fodder you were born and trained to be. You volunteered for the US military; you gave up all rights to complain at the door. Your tour of duty ends normally only when it doesn't. Comprende? As quoted in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7044747" source="Reuters">Bush, Rumsfeld Try to Soothe Angry U.S. Troops</a>, he carefully explained that, though they were <iq>dig[ging] up scrap metal to protect their vehicles in Iraq because of a shortage of armored ones</iq>, <i>all</i> branches of the military were suffering equally, so that works out to positive, you see? But let's let the eloquent, brilliant military statistician and inspiring leader speak for himself: <bq>I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing. I think it's a very constructive exchange...</bq> I believe I speak for everyone when I say, nay, shout "WTF??!!?!" When the soldiers continued to complain about the lack of armor, he reassured them that, with or without armor, they stood a very good chance of dying, so why waste time and good money on armor that probably won't help? <bq>If you think about it, you can have all the armour in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armoured Humvee and it can be blown up.</bq> It's classic Rumsfeld: confusing, repetitive and seductively compelling. The soldiers could walk away having learned the important math lesson that if there's a 95% chance you're going to die, what's the point of being a whiner when you're only going to get that number down to 93% at best? You might as well just take it like a man because you've got no choice. Now excuse the general while he hops on board his private jet and gets the hell out of there.