Sorry Donald Rumsfeld You've Got To Go.

President Bush’s decision to get rid of Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous election defeat has to be welcomed.

Rumsfeld was behind all four of the main decisions that contributed to the disaster that is Iraq and while he can’t be held uniquely to blame for the first, the decision to invade in the first place, he was the first to suggest that 9/11 provided the excuse to invade. Just as importantly, he was also the man ultimately responsible for the other three stupidities.

It’s public knowledge. A growing majority of forthright public statements by America’s generals and leading military experts have cast serious doubts on Donald Rumsfeld and his conduct of the war in Iraq.

It’s public knowledge. A growing majority of forthright public statements by America’s generals and leading military experts have cast serious doubts on Donald Rumsfeld and his conduct of the war in Iraq.

$282bn! No come on, don’t say it so quickly. Give it the respect it deserves. Two hundred and eighty two billion dollars! That is the precise cost so far of the war in Iraq to America. Yes, the latest Congressional figures show that by the end of this fiscal year America will have spent $282bn – a sum that dwarves the measly $6.13bn we in the UK have spent - messing up a country that was no threat to America or the UK in any way, turning it into what are effectively three separate states with no government and no means of keeping the country secure and at the same time creating a terrorist theme park where all those Islamist terrorists who want to take their ludicrous and pathetic ire out on America can congregate.

There have been 2,378 US military personnel killed, 104 British military personnel, 105 of our other coalition allies, and untold thousands of Iraqis killed, the current very rough estimate is around 40,000. Whose idea was it to go to Iraq? Well just about any of the so-called neo-Cons in the administration, but the man who famously put his hand up first was Donald Rumsfeld, who on the very day of the 9/11 attacks wondered whether America shouldn’t use them as a reason to attack Iraq and the day after raised the possibility at a meeting of George Bush’s war cabinet.

Of course, Rumsfeld wasn’t alone but he was the guy who told Tommy Franks, the Centcom commander, and the man who was to plan the war in Iraq, that the general's initial thought of using 250,000 men, was way off base. That figure was eventually cut in half, with Rumsfeld even arguing that it could be done with as few as 50,000. It was also Rumsfeld's Pentagon that overruled the State Department experts who wanted to put in place a proper plan for post-war Iraq.

With their forces so over-stretched and vulnerable just across Iran's border with Iraq, the idea of a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is frankly laughable, an obvious attempt by the Bush administration to strong-arm the UN Security Council, and Russia and China in particular, into backing tough measures against Iran, and one which both Moscow and Beijing will have long ago seen through. Meanwhile, China, the greatest threat to the US after al-Qa’eda, if you believe Rumsfeld, holds $600bn of US debt. It doesn’t need to attack America, with Iraq going the way it is, it won’t be too long before it owns the whole damn country. Sorry Donald, it isn’t just whinging generals resisting change, it isn't that people are anti-war or pro-war, it isn’t that they think you don’t want to defend America, it’s just that your job is US Defence Secretary. The clue to what you've got to do is in the word defence and you palpably haven’t done the job. You’ve got to go.

Rumsfeld sort of acted as the cordon sanitaire around Bush. With Rumsfeld going (and definitively gone hopefully very soon), Bush will finally be able to listen to the military top brass enunciating their strategical thoughts as to the better course of action to take on Iraq.

America should back off from Iraq now and instead focus on Afghanistan. We must all put a bit more of effort in Afghanistan to support NATO. If NATO forces fail in Afghanistan, there goes the last shred of Western credibility to do the right thing.

Let's hope Gates puts some sense in Bush.