Mamamontezz's Mental Rumpus Room

Get over it.

Donald Rumsfeld spoke to committees of both the Senate and the House of Representatives today. The topic of discussion: alleged abuse of prisoners at an already notorious prison in Iraq by members of a unit of Military Police.

Members of both committees were ramped up and ready for him. Calls for his resignation or his firing erupted, shouted out by persons in the gallery. Calls also came from members of both committees, members who at least on the surface should have had a better grasp of both the precipitating event and the repercussions of any demands they made of Rumsfeld today.

As all good leaders do, Rumsfeld took responsibility for the actions of his underlings, apologizing to both committees for their actions. This should have been the sum total of his culpability, and each and every one of these Senators and Congressmen knew that before, during, and after the meeting.

Let me explain my position. I’ll couch it in a situation with which most liberal arts students are very familiar, from both sides of the experience.

When you drive up to McDonalds to place your order, McRib Value Meal, Supersized, Diet Coke, you have a reasonable expectation that it will be filled correctly and handed to you though your car window, hot, fresh, and edible. But it isn’t. The fries are so old they snap, the Diet Coke is all syrup, and the McRib has a snout.

Who is responsible? Why, responsibility lies with the fool in the back who put the hog-snout onto your bun, for one. The moron who let those fries sit under the heat lamp for two hours is another. The trainer who neglected to show the new guy exactly how to hook up the lines in the soft drink dispenser is certainly responsible for your drink.

I will certainly go so far as to say that the line supervisor needs to apologize and replace your meal. If he doesn’t, then his manager is certainly fair game. But in no way, shape, or form is the board chairman so responsible for your horrific experience that his resignation in any way merited, not should there be any reasonable expectation of it by you as a dissatisfied customer.

Now, before you start to hyperventilate, charge up your blood pressure, and start screaming that I’m trivializing the suffering of these poor, innocent Iraqi civilians, held against their will and tortured by these evil minions of the Super Evil Military Industrial Complex for the enrichment of Bush and his cronies at Haliburton, I want to ask you one thing: where was the torture?

Where was the rape room? Yes, I saw some naked men posed on the floor or standing by cots. But I saw no military personnel with raging tumnescent members invading the unwilling asses of these once proud and peace loving individuals. I saw none of them forced to actually felate each other for the entertainment of each other or the observing guards. I saw no one suspended over Saddam’s Troy-bilt chipper shredder. I saw no red welts, open wounds, bloody abrasions, broken bones, bruises, black eyes, missing hands, mouths with no tongues, crushed feet, horny jackasses, attacking rottwiellers, or enraged menopausal feminists with Ginzu Knives.

What I did see was humiliation and fear. And that person on the wooden box with the hood and presumably wet blanket, holding the electrical wires? Has any of us seen any photo or tape actually showing this man at the receiving end of any current? No, we haven’t and we won’t, the reason being that just the fear that this person felt knowing that what he held in his hands were wires and that the wet blanket was a wonderfully conductive device was enough.

It’s a trojan horse, a starter pistol in the hands of the “Bad Cop”, the interrigation equivalent of a disgruntled teenager getting what he wants by threatening his parents with a rubber dog shit on the dinner table when his mother takes her dinner guests into the dining room.

But let’s go beyond that. As I sit and watch this, it was announced that 69% of respondents to a poll believe that there is no reason for Donald Rumsfeld to resign or be fired. 69% is a “super majority” of all those polled and is representative of more than appears on the surface.

It shows that most people understand the concept of responsibility in a situation like this. It shows that most people understand that there is a limit, and that they will not breach that limit just because it is politically expedient to do so. Yes, people want those immediately involved to be held accountable and punished accordingly, but they also realize that you don’t paint everyone above them in rank with the same tarred brush

Posted by Mamamontezz at May 7, 2004 09:34 PM