Adios [12-letter expletive deleted]

And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. The success of a Secretary of Defense is this: How fast do they fade into the footnotes of history, all but forgotten? Admit it - the SoD's you remember, you remember because they were horrible, like MacNamara or because they were recent, like William Cohen.

But you will never forget the name Donald Rumsfeld.

The curtain has fallen on the sad chapter of history known as the Rumsfeld Era at the Department of Defense. On his watch the armed services have suffered, the Guard and Reserve are breaking under the undue burden that has been placed upon them and the all-volunteer force that took thirty years to build in the wake of Viet Nam has been decimated in four short years.

He made his rounds, dropping in on the troops in Iraq a couple of days ago, and today there was the obligatory send-off at the Pentagon.

I am no fan of Gates. I've made that clear in past posts. But he is the SecDef until Bush is forced from office, either by time or fiat. A Gates Pentagon is a reality and I have to function in that framework. By that I mean remain hyper-vigilant and keep an eye on every bit of information that comes out of the Pentagon and look for patterns of omission. Gates is a facts-fixer. Hell, he is the original facts-fixer. But you don't need to take my word for it, George Schults says the same thing, and not much more diplomatically.

The biggest thing Gates has going for him? He isn't Rumsfeld, and that's a start at least.