The WSJ “Opinion Journal’s” Peggy Noonan praises Rumsfeldian straight talk and distills Mr. Rumsfeld’s appeal (yet again! — methinks Peggy’s got a crush) to its musky essence: “candor and clarity plus specificity,” Ms. Noonan explains, “and all of it within a context of a war that itself, so far, makes sense and is just.”

Still, as Rand Simberg notes, Noonan misfires on the origins of The Rumsfeld Machismo Bottling Co. (she claims Rumsfeld’s “a WASP wartime consigliere”):

Peggy, Peggy, Peggy….

A man with a name like ‘Rumsfeld,’ a WASP? Sorry, Margaret, but Rumsfeld is not an anglo-saxon name. Don’s a kraut. The German ‘feld’ is probably ‘field.’ I’m not sure what ‘rums’ would mean. Maybe it means that he comes from a people who drank sugar-derived hooch out in a field.

Well, regardless of his origins, Rummy’s straight talk is contagious; and its fair to say, I think, that Rumsfeld’s picked up a bevy of leorningcnihtes since 9/11….

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