There's a joke about a baseball team's hapless right-fielder who has had a terrible inning, allowing the other team to score several runs because of a string of errors. At the end of the inning he returns to the dugout, where the manager loudly chews him out, then grabs a glove and shouts, "Now watch and see how it's done!" The manager takes the right field position in the next inning, and proceeds to commit numerous errors which allow the other team to score still more runs. At the end of the inning, the manager storms back into the dugout, throws his glove at the right-fielder, and thunders, "You idiot! You've got right field so screwed up nobody can play it!"

That's sort of how I feel as I read the news analyses and listen to the pontification as Robert Gates gets ready to take over as Secretary of Defense from the unceremoniously ejected Donald Rumsfeld. Mr Gates is taking on a job that must certainly rank as the most thankless in history, at least at this point in time. He has to figure out a way to extract us from the Iraq quagmire that Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld have gotten us into, and all he can do at this point is try to figure out the best bad option. He'll be hampered by the almost-certain fact that the President will keep trying to salvage something from the wreckage of his plans, and will likely not want to take measures that will reflect poorly on his original judgments and actions. And he's facing a world in which American leadership and honor has reached what may be a historic low point.

Yep, right field is pretty screwed up. I hope Mr Gates can play it better than his predecessor, and that the rest of his team gets its act together to help him. We'll see.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo