Ad hominem?

With all the hype lately about the botched 2001 attack that could have secured Osama bin Laden for the US before he escaped to the tribal regions of Pakistan, I have to admit that my first instinct is to immediately blame Rummy, and to do so with extra vigor because of the rabid nature that most conservative pundits used the same situation against the Clinton White House when he was allowed to leave the Sudan.

I think Donald Rumsfeld is the single biggest negative to the Bush legacy... in other words, if we were ever to finish the "Bund Report Card" for the two-terms of the Bush Administrations, I'd score the Cabinet and Legacy areas of the grade terribly low, mostly because of Rummy (but there are other considerations, as well).

I've never liked the argument against Clinton that he "let bin Laden get away" during his watch. No one could have known the actual threat that Osama presented to the US at the time of his near-capture in Sudan, and we would have been making political and economic concessions to one of the most tyrannical and brutal regimes in all of Africa to get him secured. Any such accusations always seemed ad hominem to me... "Well, if he was a good President, he'd have gotten bin Laden BEFORE the 9-11 attacks!" I'm not saying he was a good President, but his failure to capture bin Laden probably shouldn't be the primary evidence of his failures as President, but it was typically a top-five argument for the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Levin. Certainly, no more so than it should be used against the Bush Administration of 2001.

I'm curious as to how the Bush "apologists" will play this, however. I know Ryan is a big fan, and I look forward to his response, but even more interesting will be the responses of Hannity and Limbaugh et al. Rummy's admitted excuse of "not wanting to cause a back-lash in Afghanistan and Pakistan" by committing thousands of troops rather than the 80+ commandos that WERE used seems to fly in the face of what our stated (stated by Rummy, no less) intentions and goals were in Afghanistan in 2001.

I wanted to add one thing, too... I'm thinking that much of the "explanation" for this event that will come from the apologists will have to do with the agenda behind the Senate's report in the first place. Yes, I know that Sen. John Kerry is the man who pushed so hard to get this report out, and that his agenda is purely and completely based on an anti-Bush agenda... but if we scroll back through the Bund pages here, you will see that I never doubted that, once the GOP influence was out of the White House, the "facts" surrounding failures and mistakes made during the Bush years would get front-page coverage each and every time. We ALL knew that the facts would come out, and they would be used for personal reasons by the liberal, anti-Bush crowd FIRST and to detail actual historical facts second. This is part and parcel of the "Legacy" aspect of a former President... they all go through it, and Bush is no exception.

Thoughts?