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This has got to be a joke...

I Hate Rumsfeld, Part LXVII

TNR asks, "Why is the administration so keen to [reduce troop presence in Iraq] when the press keeps reporting that we are already too thin to protect a terrified people?" The answer is familiar:

Is the new American timidity about the deployment of our soldiers just another outburst of Rumsfeldism? The secretary of defense tried to fight the Iraq war in accordance with his digital religion, his dogmatic insistence upon the increasing irrelevance of large masses of land forces in an era of high-tech aircraft and satellites, as if the ground could be held from the air. The chaos that is now bewildering American authorities in Baghdad is partly the result of Donald Rumsfeld's refusal to provide for an impressive and intimidating American presence in the streets. The escape of Osama bin Laden across the hills of southern Pakistan in the late days of the war in Afghanistan was also a consequence of the Pentagon's refusal to deploy American troops. Welcome back to Tora Bora.