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I hate to say this, but there is a serious cognitive disconnect within the remarks of President Bush quoted by the Wash Post today. On the one had, he says both that we are not winning right now in Iraq (this after nearly four years!) AND that our Army overall needs to get bigger. On the other hand, he says that Donald Rumsfeld is one of the best Defense Secretaries either -- even though it is Rumsfeld who insisted on smaller forces overall, smaller forces specifically in Iraq, and who was in charge of securing the peace in Iraq that we have not yet won. Now I like Rumsfeld in that I think he is a dedicated public servant, a patriotic American, and a man who has for decades served his country well. But to say that he has done this particular job extremely well at the same time you say the job is not going well and that we need to do just the opposite (a bigger Army, not a smaller one) overall of what Rumsfeld for six years has pushed, is to be utterly self-contradictory. I leave it to readers to decide WHICH half of this supposed equation of the president's is right and which wrong, but I see no logical way to assert both postulates at the exact same time.

When I was reading the Post's stories this morning, I thought Bush sounded like the Queen in Through the Looking Glass, who bragged about once having believed "six impossible things, all before breakfast!"

topics:
Iraq