The world, as the consensus of opinion holds even in Europe, is today a messier and more dangerous place than it was on September 11, 2001, in the wake of which the likes of Donald Rumsfeld undertook the mission of making the world free of terror. That Bush was most unwilling to let his hatchet man go was aptly borne out by his body language at the White House press conference on the day after what he himself described as a "thumping defeat" of his Republican party at the hands of a resurgent Democrats in the most eagerly anticipated mid-term election in US history.

Rumsfeld's paying for the Republican debacle, considered a backlash to the party's Iraq policy, is just appropriate and axiomatic because, more than any other of Bush's neocon hawks, it was he who personified a policy of recourse to the use of relentless force in Iraq. He strutted on the American and global stage to hawk a policy of unremitting aggrandisement for the world's "indispensable" power to promote Bush's neo-imperialism. He happened to be the major-domo of the cabal that presented a policy of unbridled application of America's pre-eminent military power without regard to the nuances of legality.

Rumsfeld was naturally marked to become the first "fallguy" because of the American people's disgust with the Bush hawks riding rough-shod over their country's dignity as a bastion of fundamental freedom, civil liberties and the process of law. All these American values, nurtured and revered over two centuries, were trampled under the feet of the neocons who mistakenly thought that America had a God-given right to rule the world. Ramsfeld was in the forefront of such ideological aberration.

He earned his notoriety as a superhawk as far back as 1996 when he put his signature on a public appeal to then president Clinton demanding that he pursue a policy of "regime change" in Iraq. Ever since then he has become the posterboy of the snooty, swanky and rambunctious cabal of neocons. He led a notorious team composed of stalwarts such as Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfo witz etal. who weren't prepared to accept any rival to the US's global hegemony. They disdained international law, despised the UN and often disregarded even the views of the allies.

According to the memoir of Richard Clarke, then serving at the White House as chief of anti-terrorism, it was Rumsfeld who suggested, on the morning after 9/11, an attack on Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the event, and since then he has epitomised the Bush policy of naked aggression against that country. Rumsfeld was fixated on Iraq, and in Bush he had a boss who wouldn't ever say no to him. George Bush's questionable induction into the White House enabled the posse of hawks led by Rumsfeld to ride to power on the shoulder of a jejune leader like him to take the Americans off on a course of risky military adventure.

He was unrepentant at every step of the downward slide of a failed policy, and resisted persistent calls to resign from all quarters, from the man-on-the-street to soldiers and generals, although he should have voluntarily resigned the day after the lid was blown off the massive violation of human rights of the preservers at Abu Ghraib.

The mid-term election of November 7 wasn't just another election. It was a referendum, and that too a single-issue referendum on the Bush policy on Iraq. Rumsfeld, the arrogant and acerbic secretary of defence was the embodiment of everything that could be identified with Iraq -- its invasion and occupation, and every bit and scrap of a terribly botched policy. So it's a befitting come-uppance for his head to have rolled in the dust as soon as the heat of the campaign against his Iraq performance was over at the polls. His fall is a categorical victory for the American people who were fed up with the war-mongers' shenanigans.

Will good sense dawn on the Bush administration now? Doubts abound, with the choice of Robert Gates, a CIA veteran as Rumsfeld's replacement. It doesn't augur much optimism to expect a radical shift on Iraq and from Rumsfeld's disaster-prone initiatives.

The criterion guiding Bush in the selection of Gates seems to be loyalty, not merit. The new secretary of defence had been a crony of Bush Sr.

Rumsfeld, either voluntarily or under compulsion, has finally bowed out of the script on Iraq after inflicting incalculable damage on Iraq, and much more on the prestige and dignity of the great country he was called upon to serve. This, by itself, may provide the chance for a turn of events. There may by a perceptible shift in current US policy on Iraq in the remaining two years of a lame-duck president Bush who, unencumbered by any concern of facing the electorate again, can take enormous initiative for the positive -- at least to secure his place in history.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS..