Can a guy really be that dumb and still be SecDef? Yes. Yes he can.

One of the most endearing qualities about Forest Gump is that he knows that he is “not a smart man.”  In spite of Lex’s haranguing of nearly everyone in public life as some kind of “dumbazz,” I rarely actually believe that I’m smarter than anyone.

When I was stationed at the Pentagon as a lowly LtCol I attended many meetings where I was not only the most junior member but the most junior member by far.  I recall after one meeting, my boss asked, “How’d the meeting go?”  I told him, “It’s a terrible feeling to walk into a room with that many people in it and know instantly and for sure that you’re the dumbest guy in the room.”  With a notion of apprehension, the boss asked, “Did you say anything?”  “No sir,” I replied.  “Did you take good notes?”  “Yes sir.”  The boss smiled a relieved smile.  “Good man.  That’s why we pay you.”

I still get that feeling of being the dumbest guy in the room – even in my own house - when the conversation ever turns to cooking, checking accounts, where the blender is stored, laundry detergent, colleges for Lex jr. or just about any subject other than what I had for lunch that day.  I go to church on Sunday and I know positively that, except for the kid picking his nose and wiping the residue on the back his sister’s sweater, I’m the dumbest guy in the building.  I go to the hardware store, and except for the old lady reading from a list prepared by her son that includes something called soldering flux, I’m the idiot in the store.

I recently hired a guy to seal my driveway.  The guy was tattooed and pierced in a way that can only be described as “freakish.”  He talked like something out of Huck Fin.  I was going to hire him for the summer just to keep him around as an example of someone who knew less than I did.  Then the conversation turned to blacktop and blacktop sealants.  The guy was an absolute savant.  While it was difficult to get the guy to state his name clearly in conversation or offer an opinion on the weather, when the conversation turned to blacktop you could not get him to stop talking.  So, after sealing the driveway, I had to let him go.

That all prefaces this simple statement: I am smarter than Chuck Hagel.  Chuck Hagel is like the result of some weird science experiment that spliced the genes of Slip Mahoney, Professor Erwin Corey and Hank Kimball.  Need proof?  Try this glittering jewel of colossal idiocy:  

“This operation, by the way, was a flawless operation but the hostages were not there.”

That was Chuck Box-O-Rocks Hagel yesterday on the Foley rescue operation.  He followed that with, “I won the Powerball, except for the 5 numbers I didn’t have.”

OK call me a perfectionist, but if your rescue operation were a ship, the hostages not being there seems like a Titanic like gash in the hull of that ship well below the waterline and a pretty huge flaw.  No doubt ol’ Box-O-Rocks thinks that the Denver Bronco’s Super Bowl game-plan was flawless – if Seattle hadn’t scored so many points and the French Maginot Line was a sound military theory – if the Germans had just cooperated by impaling themselves against it instead of just going around it.  I think what Hagel meant to say was, “As always, our servicemen performed magnificently in this effort.”  

Here’s my theory:  The day the intelligence was delivered to The Empty Suit it was, to use a Hagelism, flawless.  The Empty Suit vacillated on the decision in order to endlessly weigh the political consequences that might ensue.  When the mission was finally given a go, the intelligence was useless.  As always with TES, a day late and 17 trillion dollars short.