The Week

We regret to announce that the media’s patience with this war is exhausted.

Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s briefings have taken on “an even crustier, testier tone” (New York Times). “The lines of strain are visible” on his face (The Independent). Why should he be in the hot seat? The war was not the instantaneous takedown that it seemed, miraculously, it might be after the opening decapitation strike. A pundit class with the attention span of a rock video took this amiss; the Rashomon reporting of the many embeds increased the air of confusion. Rumsfeld, no desk jockey, is ideally positioned to take the flak. He has also suffered from his desire to shake the Pentagon up. The first Gulf War was won by using armaments and strategies developed for a Soviet invasion of western Europe that never came. But time and technology have moved on, and Rumsfeld pushed the military to respond. Everyone with a stake in the old order (which, in military bureaucracies, means almost everyone) thus had reason to carp; some have done so. The fact remains that the war planners, led by Rumsfeld, have done well. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

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We regret to announce that the media’s patience with this war is exhausted.

Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s briefings have taken on “an even crustier, testier tone” (New York Times). “The lines of strain are visible” on his face (The Independent). Why should he be in the hot seat? The war was not the instantaneous takedown that it seemed, miraculously, it might be after the opening decapitation strike. A pundit class with the attention span of a rock video took this amiss; the Rashomon reporting of the many embeds increased the air of confusion. Rumsfeld, no desk jockey, is ideally positioned to take the flak. He has also suffered from his desire to shake the Pentagon up. The first Gulf War was won by using armaments and strategies developed for a Soviet invasion of western Europe that never came. But time and technology have moved on, and Rumsfeld pushed the military to respond. Everyone with a stake in the old order (which, in military bureaucracies, means almost everyone) thus had reason to carp; some have done so. The fact remains that the war planners, led by Rumsfeld, have done well. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.