Hi,
A friend of mine works in the Pentagon and says Rumsfeld is by far the best SecDef in a long time. Yes, he might have his drawbacks, but he has a lot more supportors than eneminies.
-Respectfully
Robert S. Morgan

There's two reasons I don't think Rumsfeld will be ousted any time soon.

First, as Robert S. Morgan suggested, he has supporters in the military--and even more among the civilian Defense Department infrastructure.

More importantly, the people in the military who hate Rumsfeld won't push to get rid of him. It's better for them to complain about it just loudly enough to be heard, but not enough to force a crisis.

That way, anything that goes wrong (thousands of dead American soldiers, millions of dead Iraqi citizens, weapons of mass destruction used against us or accidentally detonated by us because of bad intelligence, etc.) can be blamed on him: "Well, Rumsfeld micromanaged everything. We complained back in March, but nobody did anything about it. So blame him, not us." They don't have that out if they get him fired--or if they back down and accept him.

Besides, it's hard to hark back to the glory days when Cheney gave Schwartzkopf free reign in Iraq (which he didn't, of course) considering that Cheney is now backing Rumsfeld and Schwartzkopf is against the war....

I can't believe anyone defending rummy get your head out of your-------

I can't believe anyone defending rummy get your head out of your-------