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The passion of the Rumsfeld: congress stages an ordeal by rubber stamp.

Article Excerpt
The annual Capitol Hill exercise of maneuvering a 775,000-square-foot rubber stamp onto the defense budget began on a frigid February morning when half of the neighborhood was shut down by Ricinus communis, a member of the spurge family of plants so called since the Middle Ages for their purgative powers. Oil from the castor bean has not been taken as a laxative by many Americans since the Little Rascals generation, but it still finds use as a commercial lubricant, one that the military-industrial complex might find very handy in this year of soaring national debt. With Senate office buildings along Constitution Avenue quarantined after the discovery of Ricinus powder in Majority Leader Bill Frist's mail, both armed-services committees were forced to convene across the Hill in 2118 Rayburn, one of the grandest House chambers. "I feel somewhat like a bishop," observed John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Senate panel, from his high dais--precisely how he is regarded by generals, admirals, and secretaries of defense who appear before him to account for their dispersements of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Humans and horses are two of the animals most vulnerable to ricin--horses especially so, since they cannot vomit. The military has returned to degoutant levels of spending after a post-Soviet decade of relative moderation, driven by a war against terrorism even more amorphous than the Red menace that served so lucratively for fifty years. Whoever the nut was who sent that toxic letter had no idea what a perfect curtain-raiser it would be for the FY2005 defense bill. Unless he did, but we must put that fascinating possibility aside for the sake of rational discourse. What is undeniable is that the war seemed to come home that morning, which always helps unfold the national wallet.

Another war was coming home, too--still coming home, though the generation that survived its catastrophes is well into the age when memory becomes more of an organic problem than a political flashpoint. The activities of President Bush and contender John Kerry during the Vietnam era--as far distant now as the Spanish Civil War was then--attained at least the level of attention signified by newsweekly cover stories because the President regularly storyboards himself as military personnel and Kerry adorns himself with fiftyish veterans on the campaign trail. Few American leaders attain, let alone keep, positions of national stature without demonstrating loyalty to the "monstrous exotic," as Walt Whitman called the armed services. The demeanor of the committee members in 2118 Rayburn, whose constitutional...