Keith Olbermann has again committed journalism in the first degree: A textbook definition of cowardice. [transcript]

Via Watertiger at Dependable Renegade the video is up at Crooks and Liars.

Remind me again who was selected to sit in the chair of the news organization that Edward R. Murrow built?

Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t seem to be able to design a shift schedule that would work for a fast food restaurant:

The 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division was extended in order to allow its replacement unit, the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, a minimum 12 months between overseas tours, the official said. The 3rd Infantry has already served two tours in Iraq, including the initial invasion of the country in March 2003.

Nor can he create a working budget to cover the costs of the Pentagon, as reported in this NPR story, Pentagon Asks for $25 Billion for War Equipment.

Actually it is Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, a man called out of retirement to fill the job by Rumsfeld, who is asking for the money to repair and replace Army equipment that has been chewed by by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The General has five depots filled with broken equipment, but he doesn’t have the money to make the necessary repairs.

There are no unknowns, and no surprises in these problems. These are very basic elements in military planning and a lot of people have been doing this for decades, until Rumsfeld decided that he was the only person in the universe who knew how to run the Department of Defense.

Rumsfeld doesn’t know how to do his job; it’s that simple.

Recently it has been reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr are both members of the Twelver sect of Shi’ia. They are among the group with the most extreme view of the role of the Mahdi, also called the Twelfth Imam.

First of all the fact that Muqtada called his militia “the Mahdi Army”, should have been a clue to people who know anything about Islam, and, as Ahmadinejad is known to be an ultra conservative Shi’ia, it should have been assumed that he would belong to the “Twelvers”.

They are the Shi’ia equivalents of evangelical Christians who buy the “Left Behind” books, as they all believe that “judgment is nigh.”

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