I'm annoyed today, and very much in need of a rant.

Head of Joint Chiefs is out

Yes, we all know now that Pace was pulled. And we all know that this was a big reversal in the usual course of things. Hmmm. Hasn't happened for years and years, going way back to the Johnson administration. Why would they break with tradition now? Could it be that....Pace would have had to face off with both Democrats and Republicans over Bush's miserable Iraq fiasco?

Pace became identified with Rummy McRumspeak and his spiffy little Shock and Awe plan. And he's gotten a lot of flack--not flak, that would be just wrong and subject me to ridicule--for not challenging The Donald, his loquacious Bossman, before and after the invasion that has now killed over 3,500.

So, Peter Pace who picked many a fine peck of a pickle to be in, was up against it , and so they cut him off.

Oh, and then there's that whole thing last March when Pace asserted that letting gays serve in the military would be immoral. Never mind that we're overextended and lacking vital expertise in vital areas. Gays are immoral. The occupation isn't, our president and vice president aren't, but gays are.

So here we are, left with an administration that decided it was more important to avoid a confirmation fight than to subject the country to the truth about Peter Piper and his many pickles. As Senator Lindsey Graham (R-N.C.) put it, the hearings would have been a "trial of all past mistakes in Iraq." Exactly.

And to make things even more squirmy, the Trial of Past Mistakes would have come at the same time as the all-important, ginned-up September evaluation of the "surge". That would just screw everything up. And we couldn't have that, now could we...?