Will the Iraq war have a McNamara?

It's beginning to look more and more like No!

The publishing world is abuzz over the news that a former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, may write a memoir justifying the military strategy for the war in Iraq. While a deal has not yet been struck, Mr. Rumsfeld has toured New York publishing houses with an outline of his book in an effort to gauge how much information he would have to disclose in the memoir in order to justify a large cash advance.

A principal for the publicity firm Shirley & Banister, Craig Shirley, said such a book would have a better-than-fair shot of becoming a bestseller if it was properly marketed, well-written, and contained interesting new content.

Well if Rumsfeld writes anything like he thinks and talks, then the book will no doubt be an unrefined patchwork of blunt assertions (often false) and meandering philosophical musings (often flawed). It should win a Pulitzer.

Seriously, though. If the publishing industry existed for any reason other than to increase the wealth of the publishing industry, then no press would spend a cent on yet another defense of the Iraq war, especially one written by one of its chief architects. His arguments are out there. So are others'. They're written by compromised people given to mendacity and they don't help anybody understand the war as it was concocted and conducted in reality.