NO BRAINERS

Take a tip from David Hackworth, whose "Memo for the President-Elect" makes these recommendations:

+ Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers.
+ Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough, smart, proven leader a free hand to bring in the best people to reshape and streamline our armed forces for the long counterinsurgency fight ahead.
+ Fire National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and replace her with retired Gens. Wes Clark or John Sheehan.

Hackworth makes a dozen other recommendations, too. Go read the rest. (If you don't know who he is, check him out.) He's no armchair general but a candid, experienced, highly decorated combat veteran with a varied military background from World War II on. According to his biography:

In 1971, as the Army's youngest colonel he spoke out on national television saying, "This is a bad war ... it can't be won we need to get out." In that interview, he also said that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years -- a prediction that turned out to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war. Understandably, Nixon and the Army weren't real happy with his shooting off his mouth.

Which brings to mind the investigation of the soldiers who refused convoy orders in Iraq. Whomever is held to account, "it seems far less likely" that Rummy Boy and his minions "will ever have to answer for their egregious failures" of planning and leadership.

Meantime, have a look at Georgie Anne Geyer's scary column from the other day,"Bush re-election could lead to imperial dreams." It comes a long way from the notion Joan Didion pointed up recently, that before 9/11 "it had still been possible to imagine the clouded outcome of the 2000 election as its saving feature, an assured deterrent to any who would exercise undue reach."

Then think about this: A majority of American voters believe the Ignoramus in Chief has mismanaged the economy and the war in Iraq, according to a new New York Times/CBS poll, and that his tax cuts favored the rich. They also believe John Kerry "would do a better job preserving Social Security, creating jobs and ending the war in Iraq."

Yet the poll found that, despite believing the ignoramus has been wrong on so much else, 68 percent believe he "would make the right decisions to prevent another terrorist attack." Why they believe that must be one of the great mysteries. But largely because of that and their doubts about Kerry, the poll shows the presidential election at this point to be a dead heat.

The poll also found that 59 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction; 59 percent believe the ignoramus's policies favored corporate interests; only 38 percent approved of the way the Republican-dominated Congress is doing its job, and that 46 percent said they would vote for the Democratic Congressional candidate, compared to 38 percent who would vote Republican.

You'd think the poll would have shown a brewing landslide against an ignoramus with such high disapproval ratings. In the real world that would have been a no brainer. But this is America, which seems to be living in a dream world. Are we in shit too deep to climb out? Will voters suddenly wake up on election day and make the right decision? I wouldn't count on it. But if it's too much to hope for, why the hell am I blogging?