Letter: Cheney should know: Rumsfeld is no giant

Monday, Dec. 18, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

At Donald Rumsfeld's farewell ceremony, Vice President Dick Cheney said that Rumsfeld had been the finest defense secretary in our nation's history. Well, it seems that the same ignorance of history that has afflicted this administration in its nation-building efforts has struck again.

Even if Donald Rumsfeld had single-handedly performed magic and converted Iraq into a hamburger-eating wonderland overnight, he would still be in the shadow of a giant of history. In the days before political correctness, when the defense secretary was known as the secretary of war, there was one man who helped save this nation under circumstances that could not even be imagined today. His name was Edwin Stanton, and he was Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war.

Stanton, who was a well-known trial lawyer, modernized the United States military and transformed it during the Civil War from a frontier army of 16,000 men to a world colossus of almost 1 million. Historians agree that he was a primary factor in the United States' victory against the Southern rebellion.

It's a shame that great men of American history such as Edwin Stanton are brushed aside for the sake of a self-aggrandizing sound bite. But I shouldn't be surprised: For this historically challenged administration, it's par for the course.

Gabriel L. Grasso, Las Vegas