CEOs

Nancy Pelosi (the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives) said: "[the Iraq war] began 21 months ago and Secretary Rumsfeld has still not done what is necessary, which is his highest duty, to protect our troops to the greatest degree possible. No CEO in America would retain a manager with so clear a record of failure and neither should President Bush."

Uh, Nancy should spend more time with corporate America. When the CEO in modern corporate America underperforms...the politicos in the company usually dole out huge blocks of stock options and increase the gilding on the golden parachute. Yes, an incompetent CEO might have to suffer the trauma of having to cut worker wages or layoff thousands of underlings. Companies rarely seem to punish the CEO. I doubt there has ever been a CEO fired for cutting workers' wages. CEOs are more likely to get axed by the board if they raised salaries.

CEOs only get laid off when they compound incompetence with political blunderings. If the pentagon treated Rumsfeld like a CEO, Rumsfeld would probably be getting a 10 million dollar bonus for bungling the war and having to suffer the emotional hardships of dealing with the growing number of casualties.

Ms. Pelosi might have a point that the fearless leaders of our world should suffer for their actions. Sadly that rarely happens in political positions like CEO or government posts.