Rumsfeld - The Gift that Keeps on Giving

While Darth Cheney is often the target of much anti-administration venom (including from this blogger), I have long considered him the penultimate player of evil in the administration. The most evil man in that soup was Donald Rumsfeld. And although he has left the administration, his inept machinations, fronted with his unearned John Wayne, tough guy bravado, left many dividends that haunt us to this day.

But how many of you knew that Blackwater was one of them?

Take a gander at today's WaPo article on the struggles between the administration's defense & state departments. When elephants fight, grass gets trampled, as the saying goes. Except when Rummy is involved, that elephant would do anything to win - regardless of who is hurt or killed in his wake. What a guy.

When the U.S. military invaded and occupied Iraq in early 2003, there was no question who would be in charge of security for the official civilians pouring in to remake the country. Under an executive order signed by Bush, the Coalition Provisional Authority and its head, L. Paul Bremer, reported directly to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But as U.S. troops became preoccupied with a growing insurgency, the Pentagon hired Blackwater to provide protection for Bremer and other civilians.

The next year, as the United States prepared to return sovereignty to the Iraqis and the State Department began planning an embassy in Baghdad, Rumsfeld lost a bid to retain control over the full U.S. effort, including billions of dollars in reconstruction funds. A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld's revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security.

"It was the view of Donald Rumsfeld and [then-Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz that this wasn't their problem," said a former senior State Department official. Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.

I've long believed that in Donny's world, nothing that doesn't benefit him directly is his problem. And that he will say and do anything to get his way.