Santa Claus isn’t enough. Every Christmas also needs a Scrooge. And Charles Dickens couldn’t have invented a better one than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He’s the perfect ogre for this holiday season.

As the man responsible for the disastrous occupation of Iraq — where things continue to get worse, not better — Rumsfeld is also, of course, the most incompetent member of the Bush Administration. How many more things does he have to screw up before he gets fired? And where’s the outrage?

Imagine the uproar if Bill Clinton’s defense secretary had refused to sign personally letters of condolence to the families of those killed in the line of duty? He would have been hung in effigy. Republicans in Congress would have demanded his scalp. Yet Rumsfeld admits that, until very recently, he signed not one such letter — and he gets a free ride.

He was too busy to sign all those letters, Rumsfeld insisted. Meaning he couldn’t be bothered. His office used an auto pen instead. Now we know what it means to be a compassionate conservative. You sacrifice your husband, wife, son or daughter for Bush’s war — and you get a form letter from the secretary of defense! Only when his cold-heartedness was exposed by the media did Rumsfeld agree to sign all future letters himself.

But that was just Rumsfeld’s most recent offense. It follows hard on the heels of his pitiful performance at a town meeting with troops in Iraq, where he brushed off complaints about insufficient armor to protect American forces. He showed no empathy, and accepted no responsibility, when one soldier told of having to forage in military dumps to patch together “hillbilly armor.” Scoffed Rumsfeld: “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want to wish to have at a later time.” Translation: Shut up and die.

Rumsfeld also assured troops that “armor was being produced as quickly as possible” — which turned out to be a downright lie. The very next day, American armor manufacturers told reporters they could produce twice as much armor as they are currently delivering, either for new vehicles or retrofit, but the Defense Department hadn’t asked for more.

One other black mark on Rumsfeld’s record: Abu Ghraib. The shocking treatment of prisoners, we have now learned, wasn’t just the work of some rednecks from Cumberland, Md., as the Pentagon first suggested.

Recently released FBI documents reveal that prisoner abuse — including chaining prisoners to the floor for hours with no food or water and forcing them to wallow in their own urine or feces — was the direct result of a policy memo approved by the Department of Defense for prisoners at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, and later applied to Iraq. Even if Rumsfeld didn’t sign the document himself, it happened on his watch and he’s responsible.

On top of everything else, of course, is Rumsfeld’s failure to plan for the occupation of Iraq — and his continued reluctance to send enough troops to do the job. It is apparent to everyone — soldiers on the ground, families back home, members of Congress and plain, ordinary citizens watching the news — that American forces in Iraq are seriously short-handed and more troops are needed. But Rummy stubbornly refuses to send more — because doing so might undermine his pie-in-the sky theory about fighting wars with the smallest number of troops possible.

So, let’s review. He’s stubborn, cold-hearted, uncaring and arrogant. He ordered troops into war with no plan to win the peace. He still refuses both to send enough peacekeeping forces to Iraq and provide enough armored vehicles to protect troops already there. And what’s the reaction from the White House? Nothing but praise!

Deep down, says President Bush, Rumsfeld’s really a Teddy Bear: “You know, sometimes perhaps his demeanor is rough and gruff, but beneath that rough and gruff, no-nonsense demeanor is a good human being who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war causes.”

Well,, it’s nice that President Bush is loyal to his friends. But what we need now is not blind loyalty, but bold leadership. Keeping Rumsfeld on the job amounts no nothing less than keeping our forces in danger. Give the troops a Christmas present, Mr. President. Fire Rumsfeld!

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Bill Press is an award-winning radio talk show host and television commentator. He is the author of Spin This: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth.  Press has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mic Award. He was named Best Commentator of the Year by the Associated Press in 1992. Press earned a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from Niagara University and a S.T.B. in theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His latest book is Why Bush Must Go! Top Ten Reasons Why George Bush Doesn't Deserve a Second Term.  And his web page can be found at www.billpress.com.