The stench of death and defeat that’s now hanging around George Bush’s presidency is reminiscent of downtown Baghdad on a hot day. There are bodies all over the place. And just as Saddam, the architect of Iraq’s pre-war abattoir got notice of his come-uppance this week (a long drop and a short stop), the architect of its post-war slaughter was also pushed from his perch (with an admittedly softer landing, cushioned, no doubt, with lucrative job offers from the defence industry).

Yep, in the aftermath of the Republican’s wipeout in the Midterm Elections, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was given the job of taking the blame. However, he doesn’t exactly seem to have been fired for the Iraq disaster and its wider fallout. Indeed, as George Bush put it - we’re presuming ironically (the wag!) - when announcing the Secretary’s noble sacrifice, ‘America is safer and the world is more secure because of the service and the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld’.

The difference between Saddam and Rumsfeld is that Rumsfeld’s orders and actions killed all those people by way of some kind of unfortunate side-effect (or at least that’s what the remaining supporters of the war, if you can find any, would have you believe) whereas Saddam *really* meant it. That Saddam was a monster but Rumsfeld merely a fool seems to be the perception. As the epigram ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ states, ‘Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice’. The road to Hell is paved with both good and bad intentions. In the final analysis though, all those Iraqi civilians are still fucking dead. We killed a lot of them and then created the conditions for the insurgency to kill the rest. Hanging one raddled former dictator doesn’t bring them back or make up for the chaos Rumsfeld set loose.

It’s hard to overemphasise the careless malevolence of the man. ‘As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time,’ he blithely told troops who’d had the audacity to point out they were being blown to shit in Iraq for lack of proper armour. ‘Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war,’ he said with his customary dark insouciance as if there was such a thing as a war that wasn’t depressing. Then there’s Abu Ghraib and Guantamano Bay. He even had the balls to say in his departing speech that Iraq was a ‘little understood, unfamiliar war’. Whatever that means after three years of 24/7 news coverage and countless inquiries.

Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State for disgraced President Richard Nixon, once said ‘it is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination’. That he also described Rumsfeld as the most ruthless man he knew should give you an idea of Rumsfeld’s character. It’s like finding there’s someone the Devil looks up to and envies.

It’s a sign of how polluted the debate over Iraq has become that by this point many of you are no doubt waiting for the obligatory proviso about Saddam being a bastard and it’s a good thing he’s gone (if not that he’s going). It’s still mandatory apparently, despite being as unnecessary as continually reaffirming Darth Vader’s status as villain every time he comes up in conversation lest you risk being accused of having sympathy for the atrocities committed by vicious Stormtroopers. Can’t we just take it as a given?

The thing is, Rumsfeld’s demise, as sexually arousing as it is, is only one part of the story and as such his sacking is something of a distraction (for a few days at least) from the wider problems of the Bush presidency. There’s a very good chance, for instance, that the newly-empowered Democrats will now start rooting through the Republican’s bins, turning up all kinds of juicy bones on which to chew. The minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret meetings with oil industry chiefs in 2001, for example. Or, tantalising for British viewers, the so-called ‘Downing Street Memo’ which purports to show that the British Government knew the Iraq war was going ahead whatever and ‘intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’.

And it’s not good news for Iraq either. Despite all the current death, destruction, incompetence, death, torture, mismanagement, arrogance, death, torture, and corruption (the Iraqi Government is currently leaking up to $4bn a year - 10% of the country’s national income - with some of it finding its way to the insurgency, according to US monitors), don’t be fooled into thinking the downfall of Rumsfeld somehow signals a change of American, and therefore British, policy in Iraq. Since October 25 when Bush said of Rumsfeld, ‘I’m satisfied with how he’s done all his jobs’ and called him ‘a smart, tough, capable administrator’, what’s changed exactly, apart from a kick in the polls?

That being the case, you have to wonder what the point actually was of replacing Rumsfeld with ex-CIA Director Robert Gates (a man with his own murky CV). The Bush Administration clearly thinks that they’ll be able to implement what passes for their ’strategy’ in Iraq if only it’s presented by a friendlier face. The military has been outspoken in their criticism of Rumsfeld in recent weeks - maybe the troops and Generals were on some kind of go-slow/work-to-rule thing because Rumsfeld wasn’t a ‘people’ person. Like office workers the world over, they had an arsehole for a boss and felt disinclined to go the extra mile, the unprofessional slackers. Maybe, like a football team, getting a new manager after a run of poor form, they’ll now up their game.

Bush, in a similar spirit in this new political era is asking the Democrats to up their game as well. ‘It is our responsibility to put the elections behind us and work together’, he said. Well, he would *now*, wouldn’t he, now that the Democrats control the House of Representatives *and* the Senate. Only a few days ago, according to George, it was the ‘terrorists win and America loses’ if the Democrats won the vote. Now he needs these goddamn terrorist-lovers’ help. Over the last six years the Republicans told the spirit of co-operation to go and fuck itself. It’s immature and probably bad for the world, not least for the people of Iraq, but it’d be sweet, sweet justice if the Democrats told George to do the same now that he’s desperate.

Poor George. He must be feeling like the Jerry Lundegaard character in the movie ‘Fargo’. In what he thought was a stroke of genius, he hired two sinister but incompetent hoods (in this case, Donald Rumsfeld and the equally terrifying Dick Cheney) to solve all his problems. Now, as things go inevitably, horribly wrong and Donald is metaphorically fed into the woodchipper, can the hapless Bush’s downfall be very far behind?

(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)