Hot Seat

I see your Rumsfeld ended up in the hot seat yesterday, Bush--and it wasn't just the ex-CIA man asking hostile questions. It was audience members heckling and being escorted out in protest. As I think you know, there's many of us find it hard to understand what he's still doing in that office you entrusted him with, while things continue to go badly wrong. Last month, I also heard on this morning's news, was the bloodiest for us since your war began. There was an attempt at retaliation with the broadcast of an outtake from last week's Zarqawi video, which showed the arch-terrorist needing help with his machine gun. I guess the idea was to make him look foolish and incompetent.

Okay, fair game. But we're still not coming off too well ourselves, nor are the Iraqi troops that are being trained to take over the defense of their own country. A strong editorial piece on the op-page of yesterdays Los Angeles Times, Bush, in which Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) made a persuasive case for getting out of Iraq now. He makes a good point about those Iraqi trainees: "The problem in Iraq," he writes, "is not military competence. The problem is loyalty. To whom can Iraqi officers and troops afford to give their loyalty?" The sight of graduating Sunni troops sloughing off their uniforms last week, and basically deserting at the very moment of their commissioning is a case in point: apparently no one had told them that they might be assigned to patrol Shiite areas.

It's a powerful piece, Bush. I trust you'll read it. Check out the full version in the current Foreign Policy magazine. Enough for today, though. Still working on those final proofs...