May 9, 2004 - With her public support for Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld yesterday National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice reminded us that last October she, and not Rumsfeld, took primary responsibility for the occupation of Iraq in her role as head of the Administration’s Iraq Stabilization Group. Her statements to the press yesterday are part of the President’s PR offensive launched Saturday to counter the growing calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation.

Rice was designated to lead the post war effort in Iraq last October in a move that some pundits speculated was designed to dim the public spotlight on the Department of Defense. It was in the period immediately after the transfer of primary responsibility to Rice that the outrages at Abu Ghraib took place. In her Rumsfeld Apologia Ms. Rice said that the responsibility for the occupation “lay not just with the Pentagon and Mr. Rumsfeld, but with the president's entire national security team.”

That primary responsibility does rest with the President’s entire team – including the team’s leader, George W. Bush does not alter the fact that the outrages were committed on Don Rumsfeld’s watch by Don Rumsfeld’s people in Don Rumsfeld’s prison in support of Don Rumsfeld’s intelligence operation. No one suggests that Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski was personally responsible for PFC England being pictured as though she were leading an Iraqi prisoner around the cell block on a leash yet her career was ended because the event happened on her watch and was committed by her people at a time when “tactical control” of her people in Tier 1 had been transferred to the Military Intelligence command. Apparently in this Administration the Buck stops well down the chain of command.

Vice President Cheney, in a second front of Operation Save Don said Saturday that "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had. People ought to let him do his job." speaking through a spokesman. If “his job” includes containing reports of conduct by his people that are more suited to the Saddamist regime than to a free people; if “his job” includes out Saddaming Saddam at Abu Ghraib then we all ought to climb on his back and bear down hard.

The administration is trying hard to keep this buck in the air, fearful that it will come to rest before the election. They should remember the multiplier effect. A buck in circulation has the effect of creating 7 more before it stops. This buck remains in circulation.