There, that oughta hold the little bastards

So Bush has thrown Rumsfeld under the bus in the first of undoubtedly many frenzied acts yet to come that are designed to appease the jackals starting to snap at his heels. That this happened less than 24 hours after the election - not to mention about a week after he just declared Rumsfeld "Secretary of Defense for Life" - marks the entire event with the unmistakable stench of a desperate man. That he does this in the middle of the Iraq war would indicate that the man is terrified.

Rumsfeld's resignation does have the desired effect of momentarily distracting some of his most vocal critics of his handling of the Iraq war. But it is just a distraction because the guy actually responsible for the whole mess is still in charge. Rumsfeld's political sepaku allows those who have strayed off the reservation to claim victory and merely delays the inevitable. While Rumsfeld was, in fact, a truly deplorable Secretary of Defense and the simple fact is that the world is a far, far better place without him serving in any capacity in this or any other administration, changing the driver of the bus careening down the hill at 100 miles per hour doesn't change the fact that we're all still careening down the hill at 100 miles per hour. Cheney has cut the brake lines long ago and Bush has permanently jammed the steering wheel so there's very little that anyone - short of Superman - can do to change the way this story is going to end. The only option available is to take our collective foot off the gas in the vain hope to limit the damage to merely historic rather than galactic in scope.

But if anything has been shown by the events of the past six years, it's that those who are "serious" about Iraq in particular, and American's foreign policy in general, are easily fooled by cheap cinematic tricks. Like Terry Malloy, we are forever destined to be a contender in l'affair d' Iraq - if it wasn't for that incompetent boob who was in charge of bringing their dream into fruition! His firing is simply another slender reed in a long line of slender reeds they can continue to cling to in the vain hope that something can still be salvaged from this fiasco.

The problem with scapegoats, though, is that they only work as long as they're actually drawing fire. Once burned at the stake, beating the dead corpse conveys little satisfaction. With Rumsfeld gone and Cheney permanently ensconced in his undisclosed location, I have a feeling that all the firewalls these jokers have created are burning up fast. The proverbial damn is getting ready to burst. Whatever kind of evil clown Rumsfeld was, there was one thing he was really, really good at, and that was holding back reality from impolitely raining on the parade and drawing fire.

Without Rumsfeld playing the role of the lightning rod, things are going fall apart fast.