On Thursday, it seemed like at the rate of one per hour, another former military leader was calling for Bush to fire Rumsfeld. By the end of the day, it had the feeling of a blogswarm, except with retired generals instead of home-based op-ed writers.
Today, it occurs to me that the result of yesterday's pile-on can only be to harden Bush's resolve to keep Rummy at the helm of DoD. Indeed, the White House has issued yet another defense of Rumsfeld's performance.
The White House gave a new vote of confidence to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday in the face of criticism from a handful of retired generals who are demanding Rumsfeld resign.Bush's determination to appear strong and resolute makes him incapable of replacing Rumsfeld, especially while there is public pressure for him to do so. At this point, I don't even think he would allow Rummy to resign in order to spend more time with his family. No matter the reason given, the conventional wisdom would be that the "resignation" was driven by Bush and that Bush had done so to silence his critics.
"Yes, the president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
No, I believe we are as stuck with Donald Rumsfeld as we are with George W. Bush. It's going to be a long 2 1/2 years.
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