Several folks have written in to ask why blogging has been so light for the past couple of days, and the answer is as sad as it is simple: the unfathomable dysfunction and incompetence of this administration has finally left me just about speechless.

Look, I wanted to like this President Bush, and after 9/11 I wanted to support his administration. That's why I suspended my better judgment and got behind this disaster in Iraq. (Well, that and the fact that we were lied to about WMD -- a charge that I was unwilling to level until a fairly careful reading of Woodward's book last weekend convinced me that no other interpretation was possible.) But things have changed now, and, for the good of the country, a radical course correction is required. And since November is still a long way off, the place to start is in the office of the secretary of defense.

Now, obviously, I don't know whether Sec. Rumsfeld bears any direct responsibility for the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib prison. In fact, I doubt he does. But, frankly, we've reached a point in this mess where that no longer matters, where the national interest simply has to trump personal fairness -- a principle that any man whose job involves sending kids halfway around the world to get shot at should well understand, and be prepared to act upon.

Put simply, Don Rumsfeld has to resign. And soon.

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