Cheney, Rumsfeld will resign in January

A betting person would be well advised right now to wager that both Vice-President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will resign shortly after the turn of the new year, probably the week of January second. The odds are very much in favor of it.

An NBC Nightly News broadcast piece aired at the beginning of December noted rising opposition to the Iraq War both in Congress and among voters, and ended with speculation that Rumsfeld might step down shortly after New Year's Day.

Several metropolitan dailies including the New York Daily News and the Baltimore Sun reported during the week of December fourth that Rumsfeld is expected to retire early next year. Possible replacements for Rumsfeld's post include acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and the nominally Democratic Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, according to these sources.

Now Cheney's name has been paired with Rumsfeld's in the "possible retirement" category by Ray McGovern, a former CIA agent and currently a freelance writer who posts occasionally at Truthout.org.

"It is no secret that Cheney bears primary responsibility for making our country a pariah among nations by punching a gaping hole in the (until now) absolute ban on torture under international and US law," McGovern writes, adding that when the Vice-President steps down in January he will likely cite "reasons of health" as the motivation for his departure.

Ever since their ardent promotion of the decision to invade Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld, along with former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, have been viewed by many as the team, or less flatteringly, "the cabal," which holds the primary responsibility for development and implementation of the administration's war policy.

McGovern claims that the result of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's recent overseas trip to meet with European heads of state, during which she discussed the issue of CIA-run prisons on European territory, was the final nail in the Cheney-Rumsfeld war policy.

"Never in the sixty years since World War II has an American secretary of state been received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in Europe," McGovern says, adding that Rice's bland denial of U.S. wrongdoing -- "We do not torture," her standard response to inquiries about secret prisons and rendition flights -- was met with deep skepticism.

Rumsfeld, who is 73, will probably retire to his home in Taos. Dick Cheney will most likely return to rural Wyoming. There has been no discussion in the media concerning who might replace the Vice-President.