Dowd: Goodness Gracious!

Maureen Dowd's column is particularly catty today.

She's so bitter that I pity her. She seems just miserable.

"Good Gracious! The Truth!" dwells on former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the new man, Robert Gates.

The woman absolutely hates Rumsfeld. She despises him with every fiber of her being.

I think Dowd's disdain for Rumsfeld runs even deeper than the scorn she harbors for President Bush.

It's so intense that it creeps me out.

Of course, Dowd doesn't cut Bush any slack.

For instance, she can't even bring herself to mention the President by name. She mean-spiritedly refers to our President as "Junior" and "43."

Once, she mentions the "Bush administration," and once, she refers to "the old Bush 41 gang."

Dowd refuses to show the President of the United States enough respect to use his name.

It's really quite childish, but typical of radical liberal elite speak.

She demeans President Bush, thereby asserting what she believes is her intellectual superiority.

Goofy.

Dowd begins:

First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.

The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.

That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.

Dowd is declaring President Bush to be a failure.

She enjoys saying, "Ha ha, your plans to make Americans safer and free millions of oppressed Iraqis failed."

The pleasure that Dowd and those of her ilk take in the difficulties in Iraq is disgusting.

The Lefties have been rooting for an Iraqi quagmire from the opening days of the war in 2003.

I don't get why they want defeat so badly.

I understand it. They don't care about the Iraqis. They don't care about our country. They don't care about the consequences of surrendering to Islamic extremists.

They care about power and their own aggrandizement.

These aren't bleeding heart libs. These are very selfish people.

In her column, Dowd spins what Gates had to say during his confirmation hearing yesterday. She relishes his belief that Iraq is no bed of roses.

It was the sort of realistic assessment that never came from Rummy, except when he privately admitted in a classified Nov. 6 memo that their Iraq strategy was “not working well enough or fast enough,” offering a silly hodgepodge of wildly tardy or dubious options, like telling the Iraqis to “pull up their socks.”

It was chilling to see in print that the man who spent nearly four years overseeing the war did not have any idea what to do in Iraq; his basic plan was not so much to fix the problem as to lower expectations. The memo, reported by Michael Gordon in The Times on Sunday, offered the following lame-brained prescriptions to manage perception:

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ” And this: “Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist.”

So with the Pentagon deciding whether to Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Rummy urged the White House to Go Minimalist and simply streamline the spin.

Junior took the advice to manage perceptions by minimizing Rummy two days after he sent the memo. The walls had closed in on W.; he could no longer minimize the war, which was escalating, or the perception that it was not going well, which had spread into Republican ranks. Even Gen. Peter Pace, yes man that he is, acknowledged on Monday that “We’re not winning but we’re not losing.”

Disagree with Rumsfeld.

Point out his mistakes.

Be glad he's gone.

Fine. I don't have a problem with that.

But what's with the need to belittle the sitting President, "Junior," during wartime?

"Junior" is still the Commander-in-Chief.

Does Dowd have to try to score political points off of Rumsfeld's departure?

Does she have to mercilessly flog the current adminstration, all the while keeping a huge smile/smirk on her face?

I'm very uncomfortable with Dowd the Dominatrix.

It's not only what she says that's a problem. It's how she says it.

I don't get the feeling that she's with us.

It's an attitude thing.

There was no blathering yesterday about “known unknowns” or “Henny Penny” pessimists. The soft-spoken, vanilla Mr. Gates offered a sharp contrast from the finger-wagging, flavorful Rummy. In a remarkable shift from the mindless bellicosity and jingoism of the last few years, Mr. Gates said he did not favor military action against Iran or Syria.

When did Rumsfeld say that he favored military action against Iran or Syria?

When has President Bush ever said that he favored that approach?

Goodness Gracious, Maureenie! That would be never!

Even though he was a member of the Iraq Study Group, Mr. Gates conceded that there would be no silver bullet. “It’s my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq,” he said. Asked by Robert Byrd who was responsible for 9/11, Saddam or Osama, Mr. Gates did not try to fudge. “Osama bin Laden, Senator,” he replied. Asked who has represented a greater threat to the U.S., he repeated “Osama bin Laden.”

Duh.

This is idiotic.

Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11.

Gates didn't reveal anything that we don't already know.

Again, when did Rumsfeld say that 9/11 was Saddam's plan?

When did Bush say that?

It drives me nuts when Dowd lies via her baseless insinuations.

The question that Dowd ends with is whether Gates will be allowed to make changes in U.S. strategy in Iraq.

That's not really the issue.

As I see it, what matters is whether Gates intends to achieve the objectives that President Bush and his administration have held all along in regard to Iraq.

Success in Iraq means leaving behind a functioning, stable government, and not a reign of terror and torture and mass graves.

Is it really that difficult to comprehend? Is that truth so hard to grasp?

Dowd can't handle the truth so she makes up her own reality.

Goodness gracious! Dowd needs to acknowledge the truth!