in defense of Rummy

With the new year, every big-time media outlet seems compelled to float its own who's-hot-who's-not list. Here, for instance, is the WaPo's. Given that paper's standing as Queen of the Beltway—beating out the NYT by dint of sheer proximity—I was surprised not to see something like the following:

Most Despised Cabinet Secretary
Out: John Ashcroft
In: Donald Rumsfeld

But then again, that seems to be the subtext on the news pages of late, so one can't afford to make it too obvious.

Over the holidays I pondered writing a defense of Secretary Rumsfeld—after all, I hold some hope of working at DoD when my grad school days are over, and it would be an honor to serve under this particular SecDef. But the what's-hot-what's-not cycle in the blogosphere is, uh, somewhat shorter than a year, and many capable writers got there first. So I will settle for a link dump instead.

First the non-bloggers: the editors of National Review, and Victor Davis Hanson.

Andrew Sullivan managed to wrench himself away from his bimonthly vacation long enough to stage an attempted fisking of Hanson. The link is here: but not like there's much need to follow it. Just imagine a battle of wits between Maureen Dowd and William F. Buckley, Jr., with Sully in the role of elderly schoolgirl.

My pseudonymous friend at Ten Fingers, Six Strings provides Sullivan with a little historical perspective.

Jeff Goldstein wonders if CNN would rather have been elsewhere during Rumsfeld's Christmas Eve visit to Mosul. More over at the Mudville Gazette.

Eyewitness accounts of the Secretary's visit are at One Hand Clapping and The Banty Rooster.

Baldilocks offers a servicewoman's perspective (see also here).

Read them all.