| WHO or WHAT | DESCRIBED BY SAFIRE |
| Donald Rumsfeld | designated by Democratic politicians as the scapegoat
highly effective
owes it to the nation's war on terror to soldier on
assumed ultimate responsibility
good man
a war leader
has the strong support of the president
effective and symbolic
[has] a duty to serve in our "long, hard slog" |
the command structure and
[Rumsfeld's] Pentagon staff | sheer stupidity |
| Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota | rudely badgered the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
sound-bite-hungry politician |
| reports [about the prison] | life-threatening
delay [is] part of long military-media tradition
no cover-up
public exposure certain |
propagandists abroad,
defeatists here | [call] American prisons a "gulag"
glefully equating Bush not just with Saddam but with Stalin |
| others [i.e. Military Police] | depraved acts |
| critics of the war | vain hope of appeasing [by removing Rumsfeld] |
