Wonkette
Oh man it is August so soon, and to celebrate, famous socialist bookstore Politics & Prose has declined to schedule any readings this weekend. Less is more, right? Especially when it comes to actual events that usually exist. No worries, there are still weekday goings-on relating to chimerical war criminal Donald Rumsfeld and a special celebrity appearance by a fella who says he works for Joe Biden.
Monday, July 27:
- The titular “his” in this new book By His Own Rules is a pronoun that Donald Rumsfeld captured and tortured, for sport. 7 PM. [Politics & Prose]
Tuesday, July 28:
- Unscientific America boldly posits the hypothesis that scientific illiteracy threatens our future. Nerds are so hyperbolic! 7 PM. [Politics & Prose]
- Jared Bernstein is the Chief Economic Advisor to your Vice President, Joe Biden! The Center for American Progress has lured him to Busboys & Poets. 6 PM. [Busboys & Poets]
Thursday, July 29:
- History, that exists! This latest example is a “true crime” story about the 80s, a time when Chinese criminals had a run of things in America, apparently. 7 PM. [Politics & Prose]
Is By His Own Rules a fawning, toadyesque hagiography or a reasonable detailed condemnation? I doubt there could be much middle ground. I’m reading Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos right now, that the glimpses of Rumsfeld’s idiotic politicize-everything hand in Afghanistan are sickening enough.
Not that it’s any surprise that Rumsfeld reduced the 300 Special Ops forces actively searching for bin Laden to 30 so he could focus on Iraq; or that instead of that sissy nation-building stuff he decided that the Afghan people actually liked being ruled by warlords and made it official policy — it’s just that reading about it in detail makes it so much more criminal.
SayItWithWookies: The full title is By His Own Rules : The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld, so perhaps that answers your question.
Mahousu: I checked the reviews on Amazon and the readers think it’s a pretty fair and ultimately critical account. The real telling part is that Rumsfeld refused to discuss Iraq with the author. I’m sure Rumsfeld has no idea why that damn war didn’t win itself.