It's disappointing to see how easily Bush partisans discard principle and morality when their Glorious Leader's reelection is at stake.

How can the top civilian leadership of the military not be responsible for its actions? That responsibility is a bedrock principle of our system of government. The Constitution carefully and deliberately puts the military under the ultimate command of a civilian--the President--and historically the President has delegated management to another civilian, the Secretary of War/Defense. Do you think the Founders set it up this way to allow deniability when things go wrong? Hell no--responsibility for the military is one of the most important of the President's Constitutionally-mandated duties. And I should note that the Secretary of Defense is not a Constitutional office. If Rumsfield should accept responsibility and resign, that doesn't necessarily let the President off the hook. The buck really does stop at the Oval Office, no matter how desperately Bush's partisans wish it didn't.

The top civilian leadership has never hesitated to take full responsibility for the military when things go right. Bush is running for reelection as the "War President"; do you think that actually means "President over the parts of the war that are going well, but the parts that are going badly are somebody else's fault"? Bush and his partisans can't have it both ways. He's responsible for the bad as well as the good. If he's not responsible for all the military, then he's guilty of dereliction of duty under the Constitution.

Historically, when the military isn't working well, the civilian leadership has had to accept responsibility, albeit reluctantly. Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for reelection when his war went badly. The decline of the military in the 70s and early 80s was the responsibility of civilian leadership, and it took action by civilian leadership to fix the problem in the late 80s and into the 90s.

Why is this outrageous problem now an exception?