I guess it’s safe to say Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, Dan Quayle’s former right-hand man, and an elite GOP insider, has been dropped from Donald Rumsfeld’s Christmas-card list.
From a scathing op-ed in today’s Washington Post:
[W]e have a pretty terrific Army. It’s performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn’t want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.
Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld.
[…]
All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck? … These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.
Kristol, McCain, and Hagel all want Rummy gone, sooner rather than later. Time to update the résumé?