WHAT RUMSFELD SHOULD HAVE SAID

Rumsfeld should have said, "I'm so sorry; I'm a complete asshole; I should never have stood still for years while American kids were getting killed and horribly disfigured in unarmored vehicles. Here's what I should have said and what I am saying now. If you can send armor plate in this shape to us within the next 10 ten days, call me at this number and I'll give you a purchase order on the spot at X dollars per pound. If you're a welder and/or fabricator and show up at Jones AFB in the next 15 days ready for work in Iraq, your pay is $500 dollars a day until the job is done. If President Bush or anyone else doesn't back me 100% I'll be very happy to resign from this deadly and stupid bureaucracy."

My thought on the political fallout from such a bold move is that it would make Rumsfeld a huge superstar all over the world, and save precious lives too. But over time even Rumsfeld has become a creature of the bureaucracy despite his gentle but persistent efforts to reform it, and so we have the current very deadly situation.

To the critics who babble that military procurement doesn't work that way, you want to say, most importantly, "shut the f..... up." If you have to you can remind them about the recent Pentagon credit card scandal where it was found that the Pentagon can actually be very flexible and very liquid indeed, at least when it comes to wasting money.

Here's an excerpt from Senator Grassley's hearings on the matter: Senator Grassley said that in one case a US Navy servicewoman spent almost $12,000 on a holiday shopping spree. He said the woman was never disciplined, and instead the Pentagon has promoted her to work in its financial office. Last year, purchases on the Pentagon's nearly two million credit cards totaled about $9 billion. comments: bje1000@aol.com