Poor Donald Rumsfeld. Have you ever seen a man so obviously flailing for a length of rope as the political quicksand starts to eat him alive?

His defenders - or at least those trying to deflect the blame - say that he couldn't have known everything, even if he always wanted to. It's also darkly amusing to watch them try and pin the true genesis of the prison abuses on Feminism and gays, amongst other things. It just goes to show that nothing is so mind-shatteringly terrible that you can't make tangental political hay out of it.

Meanwhile, however, more and more seemingly-founded accusations of Rumsfeld's having approved of the abuse, or at least known of it, keep coming to light. At the rate the poop is hitting the fan, it won't be too long before Teflon Don has a hard time walking down the corridor to the Oval Office to give the President the latest round of bad news.

And no one looks good when they're up past their knees in shit. Just ask Linda Chavez - she'll tell you.

So this is the rANT Farm's official entry in the Resign Already, Rumsfeld! sweepstakes. Donald Rumsfeld needs to either step down or be fired from his post, and the sooner this is done the better.

Here's why...

1) The So-Called Rumsfeld Doctrine Is A Failure:

Before Afghanistan, our military operated in such a way as to not repeat the costly mistake of Vietnam. When we went to war, we would only do so with an exit strategy already in place, and would prosecute the war by unleashing devastating force at the enemy. And this strategy served us fairly well, most notably in Operation Desert Storm, when it acquired the nickname of "the Powell Doctrine."

Enter Donald Rumsfeld, whose idea of how to manage a war is almost the exact opposite. His idea is that you use all the neat, high-tech advances in weaponry to do pinpoint strikes, which supposedly means you don't need as many people on the ground: a light ground force runs and hits the enemy while the planes shock and awe from above. Oh, and don't worry about the exit strategy - we'll leave when we're "done," whenever that is...

The end result of two wars fought under the Rumsfeld Doctrine is two wars still being fought under the Rumsfeld Doctrine. Afghanistan is still a battlefield, where hostiles evade direct confrontation and/or capture in a region where high tech toys don't count for all that much. And as for Iraq, we may have ceased hostilities, but the hostilities have not ceased against us; Shock and awe has turned into cut and run.

And what's worse is that, apart from calling up more people to try and mop up the mess, Rumsfeld doesn't seem to have realized that he fucked up. (Neither do most Americans, from the sounds of things, but give it time...)

2) Is The Man In Charge, Or Not, Or Not Over This?:

Back in the day (before 9/11), Rummy stirred feathers by wanting to redo the whole of our armed forces. He said he didn't want to micromanage the entire thing, but from the looks of things that was just a tossaway line. There was no question that this was his Department of Defense, now.

And when it came time for the Iraq war, there was also no question that Rumsfeld was in charge of the operations. He wanted to be in on every decision that was made, from the top down to the bottom. And the decision to go with the Rumsfeld Doctrine there, too, was his.

What a difference a few years - and some really bad scandals - can make! Not only did he backpedal during the war, and try to toss a lot of the decisions on General Franks, but now he says that, when it came to the management of the prisons, he didn't know what was going on, there, either. He had nothingk to do with any of it, Colonel Hogan - nothinGK!

So either he's telling the truth, and he's blissfully unaware of what now appears to be a pattern of serious abuse, or he's lying because he put his micromanaged stamp of approval on everything, including that.

And as to which it may be, we should remember that long ago, when pressed about conditions at Gitmo, Rumsfeld told the BBC ""I do not feel even the slightest concern about their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else."

Mmmm-hmmmm...

3) The Buck Has To Stop Somewhere:

When the blame game winds down, we may discover that this really was just the work of some gosh-darn reservists, acting on their own. But the bottom line is that someone in the command structure has to willingly stick out their neck and take it between the bones for this problem having gotten this out of hand. And that person has to be Donald Rumsfeld.

Why? He was the one who presided over the change in how we do our business in war. He was also the one who said he hadn't "the slightest concern" for how we treat prisoners under military watch, which could only have bolstered bad behavior further down the ranks. Between those two factors, the buck can only stop at his own desk.

And if all that wasn't enough, Rumsfeld is honor-bound to follow his own words.

Ages and ages ago, when he was a Washington operator - before going into the private sector - he had a number of rules for handling things. Rule #25 was "Don't blame the boss. He has enough problems." And that's quite true.

But if you can't blame the boss - even if he may deserve at least some of it - then where does the blame have to finally come to rest? Some near-faceless sub-commander somewhere who we'll only learn the name and face of when he or she is forced to resign? Or the person who's been a lightning rod for controversy since the start of the Administration's tour of duty?

The answer should be Rumsfeld, and it should come quickly, too. Because we're getting towards...

4) (Two-Thousand And, That Is...)

... and whether Rumsfeld ordered it into action, or knew about it but let it go, or was as blindsided by it as anyone else was is going to be utterly irrelevant come November of this year.

As far as the Bush Administration is concerned - or at least should be concerned, if it doesn't want an eerie repeat of 1992 - the question is whether they can afford to have soiled shoes in the rack when the American people go to the polls.

It's bad enough that we've gone to war twice and still haven't resolved either to anyone's satisfaction, and probably won't have by November, either. And it's bad enough that the War on Terror is looking less and less like a well-orchestrated attack on those who would attack us, and more like an excuse to kick Muslim ass, one unfriendly autocracy** at a time.

But the photos of the abuses, and the escalating evidence of it going on elsewhere? That's more than just the icing on the birthday cake of failure - it's a goddamn party clown with a machinegun.

Image is extremely important come election season. We can argue over whether we actually found the WMDs we were looking for or not until we're blue in the face, and some will believe anything they're told by anyone at all. But we have yet to get a good, "smoking gun" picture of the WMDs that we went in there to protect ourselves from, whereas we now have a whole lot of "smoking gun" pictures showing us engaging in the sort of behavior we went in there to liberate people from, instead.

And that should be at the forefront of Bush's mind, right now, as he's hitting his stride in pre-convention talking points. Nothing he has said or done, thus far, has really turned the corner in terms of public perception of the matter. In fact, as more details come to light, things are getting worse and worse. This might play to no effect in the sort of hang-dog towns that Lynndie England came from, but the rest of America is not so blithe, naive, racist or conscience-free.

Sooner or later, Bush is going to have to make a choice. Will he cut the Rumsfelbatros from around his neck, and let the press eat that cast-off turd-bird as it will? Or will he risk losing the election because he just wouldn't let go of a "friend," or didn't want to be seen to be caving into the press, or - worse - left-wing stormcrows?

Word has it that Laura Bush, of all people, might be nudging him to choose the former course of action. He'd be wise to listen to her. We can always find another policy wonk to take over the job, and this one might actually know how to manage the press. This one might even know what he or she is doing - imagine that!

But we can worry about finding a replacement once the replacing's been done.

Mr. Bush, Rumsfeld needs to go. Too many mistakes have happened on his watch, and too many abuses have flourished under his aegis. Stop making excuses for the inexcusable, and stop wasting time when it's of the essence, both for your own reelection chances and - more importantly - our prosecution of the War on Terror.

Drop Rummy - now.

"I do not feel even the slightest concern about their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else."

Donald Rumsfeld on prisoners under the watch of the Military (once more, because it bears repeating)

* "A Change of Scenery Down": Military newspeak for putting a prisoner in a worse cell or holding area than the one s/he's currently confined in.

** As opposed to a friendly autocracy, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, et. al.