On last night's "Rachel Maddow Show", the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh commended President Obama for taking the reins in Afghanistan. Hersh stated that Presidents must decide their own war strategies. But in the early stages of the war in Iraq, Hersh was a leading critic of similar actions by the Bush administration. Hersh's hypocrisy suggests he is more concerned with the political implications of military policy than strategic ones.

"Lincoln did not let McClellan write a report on how to win a war against the South," Hersh told Maddow, in reference to Gen. George McClellan, initially the top general for the Union during the Civil War. Hersh was offering a historical perspective on why Presidents should not rely on military commanders to form strategy--McClellan was a disastrous general, after all (video embedded below the fold).

The death of Vietnam War-era Robert McNamara unsurprisingly led liberal journalists to once again see the Iraq War as a Vietnam sequel. In a Sunday Outlook section piece in The Washington Post, former Post Pentagon reporter Bradley Graham promoted his new Donald Rumsfeld biography by asking when Rumsfeld will apologize like McNamara for the war that "many Americans see as a damnable misadventure, too costly in lives, money and national image."

It doesn’t matter how Iraq’s democracy looks now, compared to Vietnam’s concentration camps and dictatorship. The liberal author finds Rumsfeld is "bitter" about one-sided media coverage:

I pressed him, during a final interview for my recently published biography, on whether he had any regrets about his conduct of the war, he dismissed the question as a favorite press query unworthy of reply.

Rumsfeld remains filled with a bitter sense that perceptions of the war and of his role in it have been badly distorted by one-sided media coverage, much of it based, in his view, on self-serving accounts by State Department and National Security Council officials.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and Dallas Morning News political writer Wayne Slater agreed on Tuesday’s Newsroom program that former President George W. Bush appeared to be “controlled by a bunch of bullies,” or that he was “presiding over a reign of bullies, with [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld and Karl Rove pushing a partisan agenda.” Later, as President Obama was getting ready to speak at a meeting with small business owners, Slater sought to correct the conservative critics of the administration’s economic policy: “You have the right wing pounding on him day after day for the...bail-outs...a liberal, a socialist -- and yet, here you have a guy who really is tracking a fairly moderate line.”

Sanchez first had the Dallas Morning News writer on just after the bottom half of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program to discuss a recent article in GQ magazine which alleged that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “held up military aid to New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina.” The CNN anchor first asked, “Why would Donald Rumsfeld not want to help the people of New Orleans in this situation, given that he had his finger on the military relief?”

As NewsBusters previously reported, Chris Matthews and Ari Fleischer had quite a debate Wednesday evening wherein the "Hardball" host acted like a shameless Democrat operative and the former White House press secretary behaved with grace and aplomb as he wiped the floor with his poorly-matched opponent.

Matthews must have realized how foolish he looked, for on Thursday he continued his debate with Fleischer, but curiously didn't invite Ari back to defend himself:

I didn`t catch something he said right at the end of his appearance just as I was thanking him for coming on. I didn`t hear it until I watched the 7:00 o`clock edition last night. But a lot of people caught it when it first aired and didn`t like it.

At issue was the following statement by Fleischer (video embedded below the fold along with full transcript):

On Monday’s Newsroom program, anchor Rick Sanchez trumpeted a United Nations investigator’s apparent finding against Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concerning torture: “...[W]e’re making news here, because I just heard you on the record say that there does seem to be enough evidence to be able to make a case against Donald Rumsfeld specifically.” He also asked why Rumsfeld had been “singled out [and] not Cheney [or] Alberto Gonzalez?”

Sanchez had Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special investigator on torture, as a guest beginning at the bottom half of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program. He introduced Nowak by reading a quote by the investigator himself: “The government of the United States is required to take all necessary steps to bring George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld before a court.” Sanchez highlighted how the statement “isn’t being said by just anyone. This is being said, again, by Mr. Nowak, who is the United Nations special investigator on torture -- specific enough and important enough for us to have him on to talk about this now.”

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann delivered his latest "Special Comment," in which he called on President-elect Barack Obama to prosecute President Bush and administration members on a charge of torturing prisoners, and invoked extreme examples such as slavery leading to the Civil War, and the handling of Germany after World War I leading to the rise of Nazism and World War II, to illustrate that "this country has never succeeded in moving forward without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past," and that Obama must try to prosecute Bush for the sake of the country’s future. After quoting Bush’s recent words about the interrogation techniques he authorized against 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and statements by Obama expressing reluctance to pursue prosecutions against the Bush administration, Olbermann began invoking extreme examples from history.

This country has never succeeded in moving forward without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past. ... We compromised with slavery in the Declaration of Independence, and, fourscore and nine years later, we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers in a civil war. After that war’s ending, we compromised with the social restructuring and protection of the rights of minorities in the South. And a century later, we had not only had not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in the cities of the South. We compromised with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War. Nobody even arrested the German kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials then. And 19 years later, there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heartrending Second World War.

On Monday’s The Situation Room, CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre conveyed a dissenting view of whether retired General Eric Shinseki, Barack Obama’s choice for Veterans Affairs Secretary, can accurately be described as having advised the Bush administration to send more troops to occupy Iraq. McIntyre: "But Shinseki has his critics, too, who say, in fact, he never stood up to Rumsfeld, never pressed for more troops for Iraq, and, when asked in a private meeting of the Joint Chiefs if he had concerns about the war plans, never said a word, according to two people who were in the room. Asked by Newsweek two years ago to respond to the criticism he didn't press his concerns, Shinseki e-mailed back: ‘Probably that's fair. Not my style.’"

On Wednesday's Countdown, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann's latest "Special Comment" attack on President Bush accused the President of "panoramic and murderous deceit," and of "creating" an America that "includes 'cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives,'" contending that "they are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." He further accused Bush, whom he referred to as having an "addled brain," of "laying waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives" in an "insurance-scam, profiteering, morally bankrupting war." Outraged by Bush's declaration that he had given up playing golf out of respect for those killed in Iraq, Olbermann called on the President to "Shut the hell up!" Video of Olbermann's rant can be seen here. (Transcript follows)

Despite having officially left the White House in December 2006, the mere mention of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's name is almost as certain to evoke uncontrollable vitriol from liberal media members as someone saying in their presence "George W. Bush," "Dick Cheney," or "Halliburton."

With this in mind, it certainly was not surprising to see Atlantic magazine's senior editor Andrew Sullivan on Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show" assert that Rumsfeld, along with other Bush administration officials, will soon be indicted for war crimes.

Here's how Sullivan indelicately put it (video available here):

While Abu Ghraib represents a low point for the United States in the Iraq War, it is also a symbol of the liberal media run amok. The New York Times ran front page stories on Abu Ghraib for 32 successive days. The media gleefully reported as Democratic politicians, one by one, called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

One of those Democratic politicians calling for Rumsfeld's resignation, Senator John Kerry, just happened to be running for president at the time, and coincidentally Abu Ghraib remained in the headlines from spring 2004 (when the story broke) though the November 2004 presidential election. An opportunistic Kerry used Abu Ghraib not only to criticize Rumsfeld, but also to criticize his campaign rival in August 2004 stating:

Katie Couric found it newsworthy Wednesday night that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation letter from nine months ago did not include the words “war” or “Iraq.” Picking up on a story from the Associated Press on how “the deadly and much-criticized conflict that eventually drummed him out of office comes up only in vague references” in the November 6, 2006 letter the AP obtained by filing Freedom of Information Act requests, Couric failed to credit the AP as she relayed this brief item on the CBS Evening News:

“There's news tonight involving the former Pentagon chief. Donald Rumsfeld's resignation letter has surfaced and it's notable for what it doesn't contain. Rumsfeld refers to 'a critical time in our history' and a 'challenging time for our country,' but the two words he doesn't use? 'War' or 'Iraq.'”

Tim Russert was Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show Tuesday night. The main course on Stewart’s menu of questions: Bush-bashing. Don’t the Bush people have an “open contempt for democracy” when they don’t submit to the All-Powerful Russert on Meet the Press? How do they “get away with their belligerence?” And when David Gregory dances behind Karl Rove at the White House correspondents dinner, why doesn’t he lean in with a microphone and assert “you lied to everybody!”

Stewart made his "open contempt for democracy" outburst after Russert complained he hasn't interviewed President Bush since 2004, Vice President Cheney since last September, and didn't interview Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the last three years of his tenure. But Bush has submitted to plenty of other interviews (including with NBC anchors Brian Williams and Matt Lauer) not to mention press conferences. The same goes for Rumsfeld. Russert insisted to Stewart that our leaders "cannot make tough decisions unless you're willing to answer tough questions." But when has Russert submitted to a tough, adversarial TV interview about his role in the Plame-Wilson war on the White House? Never.

The Bush administration: a bigger threat to national security than a foreign spy. That was Tom Brokaw's implicit assumption in his interview with former CIA Director George Tenet on this morning's "Today." Along the way, Brokaw accused former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of running a "rogue" intelligence operation.

BROKAW: In the opening passage you describe conversations in the Clinton administration between the Palestinians and the Israelis attempting to get some sort of a new peace arrangement. But the Israelis were demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard, a United States military intelligence analyst who had been selling them secrets, who's in jail for life. You said if you release Jonathan Pollard, I'll resign from the CIA. And yet when you were the head of the CIA, you had Condi Rice ignoring your warnings, Vice-President Cheney exaggerating the threats repeatedly, Don Rumsfeld in the Pentagon running what effectively was a rogue CIA, his own intelligence operation, and you didn't threaten to resign then.