Fawlty Towers Comes to the Pentagon

huffingtonpost.com
RJ Eskow

Fawlty Towers Comes to the Pentagon

These days Department of Defense is looking a lot like Fawlty Towers, the ramshackle hotel from the British TV show. And Donald Rumsfeld seems more and more like Basil Fawlty every day - with the same ineptitude, bullying, double-talk, and mendacity that John Cleese brought to the role.

Why? For one thing, the base closings that were supposed to save tons of money and increase military efficiency apparently do - er, ah - neither. For another, the GAO just confirmed that the Fawlty DoD left radiological materials in easy reach of passing terrorists for six months.

Blast it, Manuel - er, Wolfowitz - you should've done something! To top it off, those wacky Pentagoners may have left thousands of experimental monkeys - perhaps even some that were used for bioweapons research - where they could get free in the hurricane. And that's as the entire town Biloxi was turning into a bioweapon, while Homeland Security and the Republican rulers of Mississippi neglected it.

If it weren't so tragic and terrifying, it would be funny. Somebody remind me why the GOP is called the "national security party." And when you're ready to make that Don Rumsfeld biopic, call John Cleese.