THEY MADE THE WEATHER

The Rumsfeld Memo that has everyone in an uproar is a wickedly transparent document if ever there was one.

Journalists, for some reason, keep focusing on the hypocrisy of Bush painting Democrats as cut and runners (for suggesting strategic redeployment) while his Defense Secretary was contemporaneously considering that very same strategy. As usual, the press is chasing the wrong ball.

Rumsfeld's memo is a window into the federal mind-set of a failed bureaucrat digging out from beneath a failed leader. In his deliberately leaked memo our defense secretary wanted everyone to know he was decidedly NOT the DECIDER. Bush made the history in this government.

First, the Defense Secretary throws up every option under the sun to show off his nimble, flexible mind. Options are not strategies, especially when they come after the fact, but hey, you throw enough shit on the wall and some of it sticks.

Secondly, the Donald suggests downplaying the importance of any individual option to leave a layer of deniability should it fail: certainly good business strategy, as long as you don't own the business. He, in effect, lowers the bar and goes "minimalist."

And thirdly, Rummy suggests all options should be called just that, so as to appear that the US never lost in the "lose" sense, but merely checked off one of its many options.

Oh boy. Donald, you are one naughty puppy. We have anywhere from a hundred thousand to four-hundred thousand dead on the ground. The UN secretary is saying the Iraqis were better off under Saddam Hussein than under your US-induced civil war. America has lost all influence over the one of the most strategic regions on the planet. The Middle East faces a regional conflagration. And you want to parse the word, "lose?"

So what was Rummy really doing with his memo prank?

First, he wanted credit for thinking up any option (other than his own) that the armed forces could possibly take, whether the initiative was Democrat or Republican.

Secondly, he wanted to distance himself from his single-minded, unimaginative, lunatic boss -- a fact not lost on his lunatic boss, who then fired him.

And thirdly, he wanted to recast losing as a subtle form of winning.

There is a scene in the epic Civil War movie, Cold Mountain, where the Renee Zellweger character, sobbing in utter despair over the carnage around her, cries out in her best southern accent:

"They call this war a cloud over the land ... but they made the weather --and then they stand in the rain and say, 'IT'S RAINING!'"

If we don't impeach George Bush, there will be a cloud over our land and hatred raining down upon us centuries after he, and those who voted him in, slink away.