Rumsfeld Must Go

The SMH reports that a "list of about 20 techniques was approved at the highest levels of the Pentagon and the Justice Department in April last year for use at Guantanamo Bay. Defence and intelligence officials said similar guidelines had been approved for use on 'high-value detainees' in Iraq. At Guantanamo Bay, the use of these techniques requires the approval of senior Pentagon officials - and in some cases, of the defence secretary [i.e. Rumsfeld]. "

The SMH also suggests that Rumsfeld is more "peeved" than sorry:

"Dick Cheney will not cut loose his old mentor from the Nixon and Ford years unless things get more dire. After all, George Tenet is still running the CIA after the biggest intelligence failures since some Trojan ignored Cassandra's chatter and said, 'Roll the horse in.'

Colin Powell is still around after trash-talking to Bob Woodward about his catfights with the Bushworld 'Mean Girls' - Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie and Doug Feith. The Vice-President still rules after promoting a smash-mouth foreign policy that is more Jack Palance than Shane.

And the President still edges out John Kerry in polls, even though Bush observed with no irony to Al-Arabiya TV: 'Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilise their country, and we will help them rid Iraq of these killers.'

The only people who have been pushed aside are the truth tellers who warned about policies on taxes (Paul O'Neill); war costs (Larry Lindsey); occupation troop levels (General Eric Shinseki); and how Iraq would divert from catching the ubiquitous Osama bin Laden (Richard Clarke). "