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Volume CCXXXIV, Number 48    August, 2004      

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Nothing quiet along the Potomac . .

The Potomac is stained red with bureaucratic blood as rebels from the 9/11 Commission take on the entrenched Federals at the Pentagon and the White House.

By Douglas MacArthur
Military Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Stunned by the speed and ferocity of the attack of the 9/11 Commission and their rebellious allies, the embattled Federal Army, Navy and Air Force has dug in on the slopes of Capitol Hill.

In what is expected to be only the first battle in a long and bloody Civil War over control of America's intelligence agencies and their lush secret budgets, Federal Secretary of Defense Donald "Stonewall" Rumsfeld led his forces in a bold attack before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Stonewall, who earned his sobriquet on the basis of his stupendous success in stonewalling Congress and the American people over worthless missile defense spending, his decision to occupy Iraq with inadequate forces, his program of gratuitously alienating our allies, and the atrocities committed by his irregulars at Abu Ghraib, showed true grit on the first day of the Battle of Capitol Hill.

Rumsfeld was confronted with both a head-on assault from the 9/11 Commission and a flank attack from the widows of 9/11 victims, whose guerrilla warfare has bedeviled the Federals for years.  But Stonewall, aided by massive reinforcements of Pentagon brasshats worried about losing their fortified positions along the surging intelligence money river, dug in for a long siege.

After keenly observing the phalanxes of widows and reporters on the battlefield, Rumsfeld shrewdly deployed his forces in a largely defensive position.  His forces unleashed volley after volley of defensive smokescreen, claiming that detaching the satellite intelligence agencies from the Pentagon would jeopardize the lives of American soldiers that Gen. Rumsfeld put in harm's way.

Like the brilliant tactician that he is, Stonewall has also carefully probed his adversary's defenses for weaknesses.  Thus far, he has found Sen. John Warner (R - Norfolk Shipyard) to be vulnerable to the charge that stripping Stonewall of control of 80% of the intelligence budgets might make untenable the Senator's position as dispenser of shipbuilding largesse to his constituents.

Some military strategists proclaim Stonewall Rumsfeld's tactics to be the most brilliant since Grant at Petersburg.   "I will fight on this legislation if it takes all summer," Rumsfeld vowed at a recent hearing.

Others believe that Rumsfeld's forces, stretched thin by defending Iraq, Afghanistan, prisoner abuse, wasteful no-bid contracts to Cheney's old firm and flank attacks from troops tired of long deployments in pointless conflicts, are likely to collapse.  Said one long-time military strategist: "I don't think he'll be able to hold out past the first week in November."