With a little bit, with a little bit, with a little bit of bloomin' luck

Donald Rumsfeld buffeted by demands to resign from retired generals.

I really, really, hope he goes. Not so much for the arrogant belief that Iraq could be held by the smaller, lighter army it's his ideological vision to promote, not so much for whatever "errors" that could be attributed to his office in the Iraq disaster, but instead for one entirely deliberate policy choice summed up by one place: Abu Ghraib.

Rumsfeld has emerged as this despicable administration's most unapologetic advocate for torture. Dick Cheney's worked behind the scenes to keep it legal for the CIA, the whole bunch of them are guilty of abetting it, but Rumsfeld is the guy with the pithy quotes. My favourite one is when he apparently asked what was wrong with forcing prisoners to stand for hours on end, noting that he works at a stand-up desk all day.

When all of this is over, and the Bush administration has gone to their graves in deserved ignominy, it will be the enthusiastic application of torture that will stand as the blackest smudge on their completely disfigured record. Presidents have launched disastrous wars before, and the Americans have had more than their fair share of reactionary doofuses in charge of domestic policy. But never before has an administration argued, repeatedly and in public, for the right to treat people inhumanely on the vaguest suspicion that they were a terrorist. I'm not saying that abuses didn't happen before-I'm saying that the people in charge of those abuses had the good grace to be ashamed of them, or at least not to brag about them. And Rumsfeld was the chief architect of this complete abandonment of any fig-like claim the United States had to being better than all the hegemons that went before it.

I am, I'll admit, disturbed by the fact that retired generals may well force a resignation or firing that common decency couldn't provoke before-it's disturbing to think that a Defence Secretary can get away with murder as long as he doesn't tick off the brass. But however he goes, I just want him gone, and I don't care how it happens. Yesterday would be too late.