Fire Rumsfeld.

Here's an item you won't find on Instapundit any time soon.

Long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.

Great.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

But Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations such as security and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," he said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war," Scheid said.

This is a travesty. Bush and Rumsfeld and the rubberstamp Republican Congress have lost Iraq, and by any reasonable measure, need to be held accountable.

But to Putz and the Bushbots, Iraq has gone "better than expected" and the Bush-hating, terror-emboldening media are misleading America about what a great success it really is.