by TChris

William Kristol recently noticed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hasn't done his job all that well, leading him to conclude that American soldiers "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have." Other Republicans are starting to sing the same tune.

Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Armed Services Committee, commented yesterday that her peers are voicing "increasing concerns about the secretary's leadership of the war, the repeated failures to predict the strengths of the insurgency, the lack of essential safety equipment for our troops, the reluctance to expand the number of troops."

The sharp comments by Ms. Collins, together with other recent statements Senator John McCain of Arizona, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led American forces in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and, after his retirement, twice campaigned for President Bush, suggested that the ground might well be shifting a bit under Mr. Rumsfeld.

Will the ground shift sufficiently to swallow him up?