Obama taps General Shinseki as VA Secretary. Karma bitchslaps Rumsfeld all over the place!

Shinseki’s tenure as Army chief of staff from 1999 to 2003 was marked by constant tensions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which boiled over in 2003 when Shinseki testified to Congress that it might take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, belittled the estimate as “wildly off the mark,” and the army general was forced out within months. But Shinseki’s words proved prophetic after President George W. Bush in early 2007 announced a “surge” of additional troops to Iraq after miscalculating the numbers needed to stem sectarian violence.

Obama said he selected Shinseki for the VA post because he “was right” in predicting that the U.S. will need more troops in Iraq than Rumsfeld believed at the time.

“When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and, I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling even more than those who have not served — higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate — it breaks my heart,” Obama told NBC.

Shinseki, 66, will take the helm of the government’s second largest agency, which has been roundly criticized during the Bush administration for underestimating the amount of funding needed to treat thousands of injured veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

When I read this article I literally yelled for joy.

Picking Shinseki means that Obama really is dedicated to righting all of the wrongs committed by the Bush administration over the last eight long years.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz treated General Shinseki like a traitor for telling the truth. He dared to sit in front of Congress and tell them that we needed more troops to be successful in Iraq after the invasion, which was contrary to Rumsfeld's desire to run the war on the cheap, and the Bush administration repaid him by shaming him into retirement. THAT is how the Bush administration supported the troops.

And of course, as we all know now, Shinseki was dead on in his estimate of how many troops it would take to secure Iraq.

The only thing Obama could that would be more Karmic then this would be to put Michael Moore in charge of Homeland Security. And you know, that would not bother me one little bit. (My apologies Janet Napolitano, I am sure you will do a fine job as well.)