Rumsfeld

[lofter1]

This thread is for all things RUMSFELD ...

Who is Donald H. Rumsfeld?

How did he become who he is?

What is it that he wants?

Donald Rumsfeld from his days at Princeton (http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/l-r/rumsfeld/rumsfeld'54-pre.jpg) (1954) :

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/l-r/rumsfeld/rumsfeld'54-pre.jpg

Info on Rumsfeld's background and ties to business from SourceWatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Donald_H._Rumsfeld)

Rumsfeld on CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/14/60minutes/main588518.shtml) (Dec. 14, 2003) :

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2003/12/14/image588514x.jpg
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talks to 60 Minutes
in his first interview since Saddam's capture. (CBS)
"Certainly, the capture of Saddam Hussein is important. It's important because he was a vicious dictator. He killed tens of thousands of people. He tortured people; used gas on his own people."Interesting comments from Rumsfeld, considering that he met personally with Saddam Hussein on December 20, 1983 despite knowledge of various bad acts committed by Saddam and his cronies. Rumsfeld was sent to Bagdad (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm) by the US Government as an envoy for President Reagan:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/handshake300.jpg
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets
Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of
President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on
December 20, 1983.


View Video of the Rumsfled / Saddam meeting:Video Clip: "Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein" - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983. [Windows Media Video (WMV). Opens in Windows Media Player (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp) ] (Iraqi television; courtesy CNN)


High Resolution (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/shakinghands_high.wmv) (2.54 MB)Low Resolution (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/shakinghands.wmv) (734 KB)

Washington, D.C., 25 February 2003 - The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/) (see "attached" images, below) detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would "probably" include "an eventual nuclear weapon capability," harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).

The declassified documents posted today include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats.

The documents include:

A U.S. cable recording the December 20, 1983 conversation between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things," the document indicates there was no mention of chemical weapons. Rumsfeld did raise the issue in his subsequent meeting with Iraqi official Tariq Aziz.
On August 29, 2006 Rumsfeld gave a SPEECH (http://www.defenselink.mil/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1033) at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City. Among his comments:Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!” I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today -- another enemy, a different kind of enemy -- has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history's lessons. ... We hear every day of new plans, new efforts to murder Americans and other free people. Indeed, the plot that was discovered in London that would have killed hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of innocent men, women and children on aircraft flying from London to the United States should remind us that this enemy is serious, lethal, and relentless. But this is still not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there's more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats ... Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world. (Applause.) The struggle we are in -- the consequences are too severe -- the struggle too important to have the luxury of returning to that old mentality of “Blame America First.” ...... in any long struggle or long war, where any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong, [this] can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.In the 9.03.2006 Edition of the NY Times Rumsfeld is taken to task for some of those comments ...

Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis

NY TIMES (TS) (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/opinion/03rich.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26nQ3DTopQ252fOpinionQ252fEditorialsQ252 0andQ2520OpQ252dEdQ252fOpQ252dEdQ252fColumnistsQ25 2fFrankQ2520Rich&OP=4f5c484fQ2Ft(Q2AatQ7BoJQ2BQ2BQ7BtQ7DvvgtvLtvQ7C tQ2Bp4y4Q2BytvQ7CJ4GQ51Q3CQ51Q7BiF)
By FRANK RICH
OP-ED COLUMNIST

September 3, 2006... Last week the man who gave us 'stuff happens' and 'you go to war with the Army you have' outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who 'ridiculed or ignored' the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and tried to appease Hitler.Such Americans, he said, suffer from a 'moral or intellectual confusion' and fail to recognize the 'new type of fascism' represented by terrorists ... Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of 'Defeatocrats' but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991 ...... what made Rumsfeld's performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America's fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.Here's how brazen Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler's appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain's hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?... Well before Rumsfeld's trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator's use of torture -- "beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks" -- on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had "disappeared." American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.According to declassified State Department memos detailing Rumsfeld's Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host ...+++++

[lofter1]

Candidates of Both Parties
Turn Criticism of Rumsfeld Into Political Chorus

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/06/us/06rumsfeld_lg.jpg
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Democrats have tried to turn Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld into a symbol
of a war gone wrong. The White House has stood by him.

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06rumsfeld.html)
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washington/06rumsfeld.html)By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MARK MAZZETTI
September 6, 2006

Washington Memo

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — Democrats and at least some Republicans appear to agree on one thing as the election approaches: Attacking Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a way to lift them to victory.

For Democrats, the calculation is clear. They have begun a concerted effort, including pressing for a no-confidence vote on Mr. Rumsfeld in Congress this week, to portray him as the embodiment of what has gone wrong in Iraq.

For a small but growing number of Republicans, attacking Mr. Rumsfeld is a way to criticize how the war has been conducted without turning against the war itself.

“If I had my way, he wouldn’t be secretary of defense now,” Mike McGavick, the Republican challenger to Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, said in an interview Tuesday. “I would have accepted his resignation after Abu Ghraib. I have lost confidence in him.”

Politically at least, it may not be in the interest of any of Mr. Rumsfeld’s critics for the defense secretary to vacate his post before Election Day. But with the White House insisting again on Tuesday that the president will not abandon his secretary of defense, it seems clear that Mr. Rumsfeld is destined to be as big a player in this fall campaign as many of the members of Congress who are actually on the ballot.

“Both hawks and doves can call for Rumsfeld to step down and still be consistent with their position,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “It applies to both parties.”

Rich Galen, a Republican consultant who worked as a civilian employee for the Defense Department in Iraq, said: “It’s really a free shot for Republicans. You can be in favor of what we are trying to accomplish in Iraq and not be in favor of Rumsfeld.”

Democratic strategists said the party had long planned to use Mr. Rumsfeld in the campaign as a symbol of a war gone wrong, including incorporating him into advertising and having candidates call on him to resign. But they said the effort gathered force last week after he gave a speech in which he appeared to compare Iraq war critics to appeasers of Nazism before World War II.

“It’s a great issue,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic consultant who is advising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as Democrats in two upstate New York districts whose advertisements have included challenges to the war in Iraq. “It forces the stay-the-course Republicans to chose between the president and their districts.”

Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who is leading his party’s effort to regain a House majority, said, “We are going to go after Rumsfeld.”

For Republicans, this is slightly more difficult because the White House made clear that President Bush supports Mr. Rumsfeld and that he is not going anywhere any time soon.

“The president strongly supports the defense secretary,” said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, rebutting the Democratic call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster. “It’s not going to happen. Creating Don Rumsfeld as a bogyman may make for good politics but would make for very lousy strategy at this time.”

To varying degrees and volume, however, Republicans have been critical of Mr. Rumsfeld — who had surgery on his left shoulder Tuesday to repair a torn rotator cuff — and strategists for both parties said that was a trend that was likely to increase over the next few weeks.

Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican who is in a tight race for re-election in the face of attacks on his support for the war, said Tuesday that he would support a vote against Mr. Rumsfeld in the House, should it come up.

“I don’t like the guy — I simply don’t think he has measured up on running the war in Iraq,” Mr. Shays said. “Would I vote for a no-confidence resolution on Secretary Rumsfeld? Yes.”

Representative Jo Ann Davis, Republican of Virginia, also criticized Mr. Rumsfeld in a speech in mid-August.

“It’s probably the only thing in my life I’ve ever agreed with Hillary Clinton about,” Ms. Davis said. “He’s probably a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s a great secretary of defense.”

Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican candidate for Senate in New Jersey, called for Mr. Rumsfeld to step aside. At a debate in Ohio, Senator Mike DeWine, a Republican in a close race, declared, “I have consistently said that Donald Rumsfeld has made mistakes running this war.”

Republicans in Congress said they were confident they could block a Democratic plan to force no-confidence votes on Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration’s national security policies on Wednesday. The legislative maneuvering is intended to force Republicans facing tough election battles either to break with the White House or to join the wave of criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld and his management of the war.

A no-confidence vote in the Senate could be a problem for Republicans in tight races, Mr. DeWine, Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island and Jim Talent in Missouri. Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, accused Democrats of playing a “pure political game.”

Some Republicans in tough races have stuck by the defense secretary. In a television debate on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania offered his full support for Mr. Rumsfeld, a statement that Senate Democrats instantly highlighted in e-mail messages sent to reporters.

Even if Mr. Frist succeeds in stopping a no-confidence vote, Democrats clearly intend to make Mr. Rumsfeld a star of their campaign. They said his speech last week had the effect of firing up the fall campaigns; Mr. Emanuel said moderate Democrats who might have had apprehensions about going after Mr. Rumsfeld lost their concern after reading his remarks.

From Connecticut to Colorado, Democratic candidates for the House have either criticized Mr. Rumsfeld or urged his removal. Democratic candidates for Senate in Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Tennessee, among others, have criticized him.

“I’ve talked it over with most of our candidates,’’ Mr. Schumer said, ”and the majority, if they haven’t already, will call on him to step down.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

Eustis chief: Iraq post-war plan muzzled

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war,
tells about challenges of invasion and rebuilding.

dailypress.com (http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-21075sy0sep08,0,2264542.story)

BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
September 8 2006

FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks.

Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.

"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"

Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.

In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.

On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, "life just went to hell."

That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war."

A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.

"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan ... Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."

Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days.

"There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet."

There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it.

"Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said.

Eventually other military agencies - like the transportation and Army materiel commands - had to get involved.

They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.

Planning continued to be a challenge.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Why did Rumsfeld think that? Scheid doesn't know.

"But think back to those times. We had done Bosnia. We said we were going into Bosnia and stop the fighting and come right out. And we stayed."

Was Rumsfeld right or wrong?

Scheid said he doesn't know that either.

"In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."

Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

"We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are.

"Now we're going more toward a civil war. We didn't see that coming."

While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the American public's view of the troops.

He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline.

"We're really hurting right now," he said.

Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen contributed to this report.


Copyright © 2006, Daily Press

[lofter1]

Partisan Combat (http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/shared-blogs/ajc/luckovich/entries/2006/09/08/partisan_combat.html)

http://www.ajc.com/shared-blogs/ajc/luckovich/media/mike0910.gif

By Mike Luckovich (http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/shared-blogs/ajc/luckovich/entries/2006/09/08/partisan_combat.html#postcomment)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, September 8, 2006

[lofter1]

Three Retired Officers Demand Rumsfeld's Resignation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/retiredgeneralsweb2.jpg (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500731.html)
AP

Washington Post (http://www. Washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500731.html)
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 25, 2006

Three retired military officers who served in Iraq called today for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, telling a Democratic "oversight hearing" on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon chief bungled planning for the U.S. invasion, dismissed the prospect of an insurgency and sent American troops into the fray with inadequate equipment.

The testimony by the three --two retired Army major generals and a former Marine colonel -- came a day after disclosure of a classified intelligence assessment that concluded the war in Iraq has fueled recruitment of violent Islamic extremists, helping to create a new generation of potential terrorists around the world and worsening the U.S. position.

In testimony before the Democratic Policy Committee today, retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 and served as a senior military assistant to former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, charged that Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq."

He told the committee, "If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents."

Joining his call for Rumsfeld to resign were retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who was responsible for training Iraq's military and police in 2003 and 2004, and retired Marine Col. Thomas X. Hammes, who served in Iraq in 2004 and helped establish bases for the reconstituted Iraqi armed forces.

Rumsfeld, appearing at a news briefing with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, rejected the demands for his resignation. Asked about the Capitol Hill hearing and whether he was considering stepping down, Rumsfeld shook his head slightly and mouthed the word "no" before calling for the next question.

Democrats today sought to make the most of the National Intelligence Assessment and of the retired officers' remarks at the hearing, which Democratic leaders said they had to hold by themselves outside the regular congressional process because of the Republican leadership's persistent "neglect" of oversight.

"On the heels of the disclosure that America's intelligence community has concluded that the war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat, today's hearing deals a fatal blow to any claim that staying the current course is an acceptable strategy for success in Iraq," said a statement issued by the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Batiste charged in his testimony that Rumsfeld "is not a competent wartime leader" and surrounded himself with "compliant" subordinates.

"Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build 'his plan,' which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq up for self-reliance," Batiste said.

In addition, Rumsfeld "refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency," the retired general said. "At one point, he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan," Batiste added.

"Secretary Rumsfeld's dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq," Batiste said. "He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency."

Eaton told the panel, "We went in with a bad plan," adding that "stay the course is not a strategy."

Hammes said removing the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein "introduced major instability not just in Iraq, but in the greater Middle East."

And while the Bush administration has repeatedly said the war in Iraq is critical to U.S. security, "it has asked nothing of the majority of U.S. citizens," he said.

"While asking major sacrifices, to include the ultimate sacrifice, from those Americans who are serving in Iraq, we are not even asking our fellow citizens to pay for the war," Hammes complained. "Instead we are charging it to our children and grandchildren."

Responding to critics who have charged that the National Intelligence Assessment shows the failure of Bush's Iraq war policy, the White House today sought to put the best face on the document, which was completed in April and disclosed in the news media Sunday.

"One thing that the reports do not say is that war in Iraq has made terrorism worse," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

The National Intelligence Assessment "is not limited to Iraq," he told a news briefing. "The false impression has been created that the NIE focuses solely on Iraq and terrorism. This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality, the morphing of al-Qaeda and its affiliates and other jihadist movements. It assesses that a variety of factors, in addition to Iraq, fuel the spread of jihadism, including longstanding social grievances, slowness of the pace of reform and the use of the Internet. And it also notes that should jihadists be perceived to have failed in Iraq, fewer will be inspired to carry on the fight."

All these points already have been stated publicly by Bush, Snow asserted.

"Obviously, we're not going to go into what the classified report does say, but what we did see in the newspapers yesterday, the substance, is precisely what the president has been saying," he told reporters.

Separately, Vice President Cheney today accused Democrats of advancing a "strategy of resignation and defeatism in the face of determined enemies."

In a speech at a Republican fundraiser in Milwaukee, Cheney indicated that he was not backing away from national security issues despite Democrats' criticism that the administration has mishandled the war in Iraq.

"As we make our case to the voters in this election season, it's vital to keep issues of national security at the top of the agenda," Cheney told Wisconsin Republicans, Reuters news agency reported. He specifically criticized Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, as well as Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

Reid replied in a statement, "When the U.S. intelligence community confirmed that America is losing the war on terror because of Bush failures in Iraq, this White House lost all credibility on matters of national security. With Iraq in a civil war, Afghanistan moving backwards and our own borders unsecured, it's clear George Bush and Dick Cheney are desperate to hide their record and distort the truth."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[milleniumcab]

This thread is for all things RUMSFELD ...

Who is Donald H. Rumsfeld?

How did he become who he is?

What is it that he wants?

Donald Rumsfeld from his days at Princeton (http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/l-r/rumsfeld/rumsfeld'54-pre.jpg) (1954) :

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/l-r/rumsfeld/rumsfeld'54-pre.jpg

Info on Rumsfeld's background and ties to business from SourceWatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Donald_H._Rumsfeld)

Rumsfeld on CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/14/60minutes/main588518.shtml) (Dec. 14, 2003) :

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2003/12/14/image588514x.jpg
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talks to 60 Minutes

in his first interview since Saddam's capture. (CBS)"Certainly, the capture of Saddam Hussein is important. It's important because he was a vicious dictator. He killed tens of thousands of people. He tortured people; used gas on his own people."Interesting comments from Rumsfeld, considering that he met personally with Saddam Hussein on December 20, 1983 despite knowledge of various bad acts committed by Saddam and his cronies. Rumsfeld was sent to Bagdad (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm) by the US Government as an envoy for President Reagan:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/handshake300.jpg
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets
Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of
President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on
December 20, 1983.+++++

I say again and again, DOWN WITH THE WICKED PERVERTS..ALL OF THEM..:mad:

[Jake]

So what that he met the guy, Barbara Walters met with far worse people! :D



If I remember correctly there was even more criticism with a certain guy named John

and look the guy left and we managed to replace him with a guy that wants to jail more people than Johny-boy !

take that democrats! muahahaaha

[milleniumcab]

Rumsfeld is an "EVIL-DOER"...

[lofter1]

Rumsfled has completely failed in every aspect of his "iraq Plan" -- except getting Houssein out of power, and that is no feather in Rummy's cap.

[kz1000ps]

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pictures/l-r/rumsfeld/rumsfeld'54-pre.jpg

Wow, I know, like, 60 guys who like look just like that. I don't know, like, what they were called in the past, but today we like call them "yah dood"s.

"Long day at school"
"yah dood."

"I'm having my way with your girl, son."
"yah dood."

[lofter1]

It's Time for Him to Go



washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601415.html)
By Robert Dallek
Sunday, October 8, 2006

Before he appointed Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, President Bush would have done well to listen to the tape of an old telephone conversation between Rumsfeld and President Richard M. Nixon. It was March 1971, and Nixon was offering career advice to Rumsfeld, then head of Nixon's Office of Economic Opportunity:

"You should be thinking of what you should do in the future," he told the 39-year-old Rumsfeld. "Down the road, my view is that you would be a Cabinet officer. . . . [A]nd you can do, as far as I'm concerned, anything in the Cabinet field, except I wouldn't put you in Defense and I wouldn't put you in State . . . actually, you could be attorney general."

Perhaps Nixon understood something about Rumsfeld that eludes Bush. Whether out of loyalty to his defense secretary, or out of a stubborn reluctance to acknowledge Rumsfeld's failings -- and therefore his own -- Bush seems determined to keep Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. In so doing, the president is hanging on to an individual who has become the public face of the U.S. debacle in Iraq, one who has drawn fire not only from political opponents and countless retired military officers, but also from longtime Bush loyalists, such as former chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and even, reportedly, first lady Laura Bush.

But Bush would not be the first president to keep a controversial or ineffective official in place for fear of embarrassing his administration. Predecessors from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon B. Johnson have grappled with similar dilemmas.

Forcing Rumsfeld to retire would be a political blow for the White House, at least in the short term: It would be an admission that Bush not only miscalculated the need for a preemptive war against Saddam Hussein but also bungled the plan to pacify and democratize Iraq after the invasion.
Nonetheless, history shows that such tough personnel decisions can, eventually, prove healthy for an administration and for a nation, particularly in times of war. They force reassessments of long-standing policy; they help presidents stand back, evaluate and chart new directions.

Now, with little more than two years remaining in the Bush administration, the president can still drop his longtime defense secretary in favor of another who could bring fresh ideas and renewed credibility to the battle against terrorism and the war in Iraq. It's not too late.

Some Cabinet members stay in office long beyond their usefulness. Cordell Hull ended up as the longest-serving U.S. secretary of state (from 1933 to 1944) despite his unimaginative leadership and severely limited role in shaping Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was reluctant to kick out "Engine" Charlie Wilson, his much-criticized defense secretary. At the time, some joked that Wilson, a former General Motors executive, had invented the automatic transmission so that he would always have one foot free to stuff in his mouth. And Nixon resisted firing Attorney General John N. Mitchell despite -- or because of -- his role in Watergate.

Other Cabinet secretaries, by contrast, leave too soon. President Jimmy Carter and the country lost a thoughtful public servant when Cyrus Vance resigned as secretary of state after the failed hostage rescue effort in Iran, which he had opposed. Vance's departure deprived the administration of an experienced national security official at a time of great international turmoil; the move only reinforced Carter's shortcomings as a foreign policy leader and weakened his bid for a second term.

It is wars, however, that provide some of the toughest personnel decisions for presidents -- but also some of the best opportunities to change course. The wartime dismissals or resignations of three high-level officials are particularly illustrative: William Jennings Bryan, Wilson's secretary of state; Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Harry S. Truman's commander of U.S. forces in Korea; and Robert McNamara, Johnson's secretary of defense and principal architect of the war in Vietnam.

Bryan resigned in 1915 over his belief that Wilson -- by favoring Britain and France -- was violating the stated U.S. policy of neutrality in World War I. The move came as a surprise to the White House, and resurrected questions about Bryan's suitability as the country's chief diplomat. A parochial Midwesterner with limited knowledge of the outside world, Bryan had been puzzled by a diplomat's mention of the Balkans during a trip he took to Europe in 1908. "What are they?" he asked as he boarded a train in Constantinople.

Bryan had been appointed to State for his eminence as a party leader and his help in winning Wilson the Democratic presidential nomination, not for any expertise in world affairs; he was certainly not the best person to shape an effective response to the European war that began in 1914. But his sudden departure -- its initial embarrassment to Wilson notwithstanding -- forced into the open a debate over America's role in the conflict and helped spur the domestic consensus that allowed the United States to join the Great War.

When Truman dismissed MacArthur in 1951 after the general publicly attacked the president's Korea policy as too timid -- "There is no substitute for victory," MacArthur had declared -- Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned Truman that the move would provoke "the biggest fight of your administration" with the men Acheson called the "political primitives." But it was more than right-wing zealots who attacked Truman over his decision. The dismissal became a headline story nationwide. In the words of Truman biographer David McCullough, the reaction "was stupendous, the outcry from the American people was shattering." Calls for Truman's impeachment became common and MacArthur's return to the United States turned into a triumphant tour of major cities, with parades and demonstrations greeting the general. Sixty-nine percent of Americans sided with MacArthur against the president.

Within weeks, however, the outcry turned into acceptance of the president's assertion of civilian authority over military power. MacArthur's firing eventually led to a sober examination of what best served U.S. interests in Asia -- a wider war with China or a conflict confined to Korea that contained communist aggression and left the United States free to defend its security in other parts of the world? In hindsight, MacArthur's firing encouraged a realistic understanding that containment made more sense than war. "Victory" was no more the only exit strategy in Korea than it was decades later in Vietnam or than it is today in Iraq -- no matter what Henry Kissinger said to Nixon in the 1970s or whispers to Bush and Vice President Cheney today.

McNamara's departure from the Johnson administration in 1967 was nothing like MacArthur's. McNamara left with his boss's blessing and received the presidency of the World Bank as a reward. But the real story behind the resignation was different from the image of a public servant in sync with his president on the Vietnam War and taking his leave after years of exhausting service. By the fall of 1967, McNamara had concluded that the war was a lost cause and urged Johnson to reduce U.S. involvement and shift responsibility for the fighting to the South Vietnamese -- a strategy reminiscent of today's "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." Indeed, the failed "Vietnamization" experiment of the Vietnam War should only deepen doubts that a rebuilt Iraqi army can deal effectively with Iraq's violent insurgency.

Johnson became angry with his defense secretary for abandoning a strategy that McNamara himself had done so much to put in place, and the president considered his removal a way to sustain the U.S. effort in Vietnam. But instead, McNamara's departure forced Johnson to reconsider the secretary's proposal and, eventually, to adopt it. Following the resignation, the president consulted with America's foreign policy "wise men" -- such as Acheson, W. Averell Harriman and Maxwell D. Taylor -- who convinced him that the country would not pay the price in blood and treasure to win in Vietnam. However uncomfortable and wrenching the departure may have been for both men, it was also a constructive step toward ending what had become a divisive and unpopular war, and one that was ultimately unproductive in the larger contest with Soviet communism.

Today, the nation again faces a divisive and unpopular war, and one that appears counterproductive in the larger battle against Islamic extremism. And in this war, Bush and Rumsfeld -- and, in particular, Cheney and Rumsfeld -- seem joined at the hip.

Yet the president should consider how the departures of Bryan, MacArthur and McNamara helped spark useful national debates and critical course corrections during World War I, Korea and Vietnam. Rather than considering Rumsfeld's exit as strictly an embarrassing confession of failure -- which of course it would be in part -- Bush could regard the appointment of a new defense secretary as an opportunity to stand back, review past actions and move in new directions.

Robert Lansing, a competent diplomat, took over for Bryan as Wilson's secretary of state. Johnson chose Clark Clifford, a respected and independent Washington figure, to fill in for McNamara. Both were instrumental in shifting policy on their respective wars, and were just as successful in renewing public confidence in U.S. efforts and intentions.
Similarly, Bush could consider replacing Rumsfeld with someone of the stature of former senator George Mitchell or, as former chief of staff Card suggested (according to Bob Woodward's account in his new book "State of Denial"), former secretary of state James A. Baker III.

Finally, there is one candidate who is as qualified as he is unlikely to ever get the job: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser under Carter.

Brzezinski has proved brilliant and incisive in his criticism of the war. He notes, correctly, that there is no real U.S. strategy underpinning this conflict, as containment and deterrence focused the Cold War.
Preemption has been disastrous, and victory is an outcome, not a strategy. Brzezinski also has the force of will and personality to demand real change. But that sort of change would require more than a new defense secretary -- it would require a new administration.


Robert Dallek's book, "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power,"
will be published by HarperCollins next spring.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[lofter1]

Top US general says Rumsfeld is inspired by God

rawstory.com / yahoo.com (http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2F s%2Fafp%2F20061019%2Fpl_afp%2Fusmilitarypolitics_0 61019193550)
Thu Oct 19, 2006

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building," Pace said at a ceremony at the Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami.

Rumsfeld has faced a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation, largely over his handling of the Iraq war.

But he got a strong show of support from the military establishment at Thursday's ceremony, where Navy Admiral James Stavridis took over Southcom's command from General Bantz Craddock.

"He comes to work everyday with a single-minded focus to make this country safe," said Stavridis who was a senior aide to Rumsfeld before taking on the Southcom job.

"We're lucky as a nation that he continues to serve with such passion and such integrity and such determination and such brilliance," said Stavridis, 51.

As head of Southcom, Stavridis will be responsible for military cooperation with Latin American countries, and will be in charge of the Guantanamo US military base in Cuba where more than 400 "war on terror" detainees are being held.

Craddock, who was named supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, hailed the role Southcom has played.

"Today I believe that we can say we were successful in our efforts and contributed to ensuring our nation's security through support on the global war on terror, and encouraged regional cooperation to enhance the security and stability in the region," he said.

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Press

[ablarc]

He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country...
Impossible. The good Lord would give better advice.

[ManhattanKnight]

Semper fi . . .

http://www.jabtv.com/takeajab/takeajab_images/Peter_Pace.jpg

[ManhattanKnight]

General Bantz Craddock

Why is Stanley Kubrick never around when he's really needed?

[ZippyTheChimp]

First casualty of the 2006 Midterm Elections:

Rumsfeld will resign as Sec of Defense.

[lofter1]

CNN reports that Rumsfeld will quit (or should I say "cut and run"?) ...

Drudge reports the same :

REPORT: RUMSFELD TO RESIGN (http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/08/D8L91ID02.html)

[OmegaNYC]

The first of many more to come. I'm sure the Bush admin would rather have people resign, then to have the Demo clean house.

[londonlawyer]

It's about time. I wonder if his replacement is as psycho as Rummy and is as fully subservient to Israel and AIPAC!

[lofter1]

Bush has just announced his choice of Bob Gates to take over as Secretary of Defense ...

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates) :

Dr. Robert Michael Gates (born September 25 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_25), 1943 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943)) could become the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense. President Bush announced on November 8th, 2006 his intention to nominate Gates for the position which requires Senate confirmation. Previous to that office, he served as Director of Central Intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_Central_Intelligence) from November 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_6), 1991 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991) until January 20 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_20), 1993 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993), capping a 26-year career in the CIA and the National Security Council (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Council). Immediately before being nominated to the post of Secretary of Defense, he was the President of Texas A&M University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_University) and the National President of the National Eagle Scout Association (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eagle_Scout_Association). He and his wife Becky have two children. He has been mentioned as a potential replacement for outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Gates while at the CIA was a central figure (http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_16.htm) in the Iran / Contra Scandal during the Reagan Presidency:

Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA's deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities. The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment of Gates for his Iran/contra activities or his responses to official inquiries.

[lofter1]

Pearl Harbor Redux: The Warning Failure

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0110cia.html

By Melvin A Goodman
October 22, 2001

... In his memoirs, former secretary of state George Shultz demonstrated that CIA involvement in a policy of covert action tainted its intelligence. His memoirs remind us that when operations and analysis get mixed up, "the president gets bum dope." Shultz demonstrated how this happened in the 1980s in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, all contributign to the strife we face today in Southwest Asia. CIA director William Casey and his deputy Robert Gates covered up important intelligence regarding Pakistani nuclear developments in order to protect the covert action program supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, and they exaggerated the role of the Stingers against Soviet forces in order to trumpet clandestine deliveries of surface-to-air weapons. When I challenged the operational director of the deliveries about providing weapons to the most reactionary members of the mujahedeen long after the Soviet withdrawal, he responded "we merely delivered the weapons to Pakistan and let God sort it out." This is the mentality that provided weapons and influence to Bin Laden and other anti-western fanatics.

There is no doubt that Washington has the will, resolve, and character to eventually win the war against terrorism. But such a victory will demand accurate and objective intelligence analysis, both short-term and tactical as well as long-term and strategic. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld recently stated that the role of intelligence will be more important than military operations in the war against terrorism.

But the CIA will have to install a new leadership team, particularly in its intelligence and operations directorates, to replace those individuals who have come from staff positions at the Senate intelligence committee to become the CIA director and his chief of staff. The CIA also rewarded those individuals who contributed to the politicization of intelligence under Robert Gates, including the current deputy CIA director, the deputy director for intelligence, the national intelligence officer for Russia and Europe, the chief of legislative affairs, and the head of the school for the study of intelligence. These careerists carry the message that the CIA still favors a management style that puts personal ambition ahead of solid intelligence analysis.

[SilentPandaesq]

^^Well.... He wasn't going to give the job to some guy who might have reservations about puting political power over the truth.

Not suprised....which is sad.....

On Rummy... a healthy "Boo-yea" (insert two fists meeting in an atomic explosion of jockiness) is in order.

[daver]

Gates was also involved in the Iran-Contra cover up...

[daver]

Time to fork the thread?

Some more scaryness here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1991_cr/#gates

Particularily good are the NY Times Editorial:

[FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCT. 18, 1991]
The Once and Future C.I.A.


These have not been stellar years for the Central Intelligence Agency. Even with the distinguished outsider Judge William Webster in charge, the once-proud agency has, at least to public perception, flunked. Who there anticipated the fall of the Berlin wall, the aggression of Saddam Hussein, the implosion of the Soviet Union?

Nevertheless, President Bush contends he needs an experienced insider and has nominated Robert Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence, a choice the Senate Intelligence Committee votes on today. There are strong reasons to vote no.

Mr. Gates has done his best to dispel the doubts that forced him to withdraw when he was first nominated in 1987. He has seemed contrite and open-minded and cites his broad experience and future vision. But senators would do well to consider at least three criteria.

Whether his past performance shows him to warrant their trust. . . whether he has earned the confidence of agency employees . . . and above all, whether he, an insider, is the right person to lead the agency into uncertain times. On each count, Mr. Gates falls short.

David Boren, the committee chairman, commends Mr. Gates for forthrightness. Yet he overlooks occasions when Mr. Gates helped skew intelligence assessments and was demonstrably blind to illegality. The illegality concerns the Iran-contra scandal. Mr. Gates contends he was `out of the loop' on decisions about what to tell Congress. And he defends his professed ignorance on grounds of deniability--that he was shielding the C.I.A. from involvement. These contentions defy belief.

The testimony of other puts Mr. Gates, on at least two occasions, very much in the loop. He supervised preparation of Director William Casey's deceitful testimony to Congress about the scandal. And one C.I.A. analyst, Charles Allen, says he informed Mr. Gates, before it came to light, of three unforgettable details: Oliver North's involvement, the markup of prices of arms sold surreptitiously to Iran, and diversion of the proceeds into a fund for covert operations. In a telling lapse of his reputedly formidable memory, Mr. Gates could not recall the details when Congress asked two months later.

The second criterion concerns intelligence estimates. Incorrect forecasting should not be disqualifying; estimates can be wrong for the right reasons of political expediency, that's `cooking the books.'

The hearings have documented at least three cases of such slanting: a May 1985 estimate on Iran, estimates of Soviet influence in the third world, and assessments of Soviet complicity in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Mr. Gates has responded to their testimony but not refuted it. He evidently went to great lengths to manipulate the process, because highly reticent career officials testified against him in public. That electrifying development demonstrates how little confidence Mr. Gates enjoys in the agency.

It can be argued that his experience makes him well suited to lead the C.I.A. into the future. As a former Deputy Director and deputy national security adviser, he knows how intelligence assessments are put together and what policy makers need. And he knows the U.S. will not keep spending $30 billion a year on intelligence.

But it is more reasonable to think the agency would be better off with a director unbound by William Casey's dark legacy--the conviction that the agency knows best, a barely concealed contempt for Congress and a belief that anything goes including evading the law. Reshaping the agency wisely depends on casting off the legacy.

Thomas Polgar, a C.I.A. veteran, urged the committee to consider the message that confirmation would send. Would officials wonder whether it was wise for outspoken witnesses to risk their careers by testifying? Would they say to themselves, `Serve faithfully the boss of the moment; never mind integrity? Feel free to mislead the Senate--senators forget easily?
By voting no, senators will vote to remember.



And Harkin's speech:

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.


Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates' past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

Mr. President, Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as `the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.' And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihanhas pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, `insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.' What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

Mr. President, Graham Fuller, the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, suggested that the 1985 SNIE estimate was based on intuition in the absence of hard evidence. I agree there is nothing wrong with preparing worse case scenarios or using `intuition' as opposed to hard evidence in the preparation of analysis, provided it is made clear to policymakers that the finished analysis is based on intuition and not hard evidence. It is the job of the CIA to sort out fact from fiction, not convert one into the other.

Mr. President, I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates' role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq. Robert Gates served as assistant to the Director of the CIA in 1981 and as Deputy Director for Intelligence for 1982 to 1986. In that capacity he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually involved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping and narrative texts provided to Saddam, may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran but also in the recent gulf war. Saddam Hussein may have discovered the value of underground land lines as opposed to radio communications after he was give our intelligence information. That made it more difficult for the allied coalition to get quick and accurate intelligence during the gulf war. Further, after the Persian Gulf war, our intelligence community was surprised at the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. One reason Saddam may have hidden his nuclear program so effectively from detection was because of his knowledge of our satellite photos. What also concerns me about that operation is that we spend millions of dollars keeping secrets from the Soviets and then we give it to Saddam who sells them to the Soviets. In short, the coddling of Saddam was a mistake of the first order.

Mr. President, I've stated a very simple case for rejecting the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the CIA. The fact that he was wrong on major issues which in some instances led to foreign policy debacles. I haven't addressed concerns about the allegations of his politicization of intelligence analysis, his apparently poor managerial style or still unanswered questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Regarding the Iran-Contra affair, I should mention that I was quite disturbed to hear testimony that portrayed Robert Gates as someone concerned about Agency's role and not sufficiently concerned about pursuing possible illegal Government activities. In his opening statement before the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Gates said that he should have taken more seriously `the possibility of impropriety or possible wrongdoing in the Government and pursued this possibility more aggressively.' I agree.

I should also mention, Mr. President, that aside from Mr. Gates' poor judgment in not pursuing the possibility of Government wrongdoing more aggressively, I still find it incredible that the Deputy Director of CIA was not aware of that major covert operation. How could such a high ranking official not know about the CIA's efforts to support the Contras? Did he purposely avoid trying to find out what was happening? The testimony seemed to indicate he did. Gates' selective lapses in recall about the affair by a man with a photographic memory raises serious doubts.

The U.S. Congress and the American people depend on accurate and reliable intelligence information. Our expenditures on defense and other areas are often decided on the basis of that information. We cannot afford to waste billion of dollars in the future. After reviewing the record, I do not believe that the Central Intelligence Agency under the directorship of Robert Gates will provide the clear intelligence assessments necessary for Congress to make decisions to deal with the future threats confronting our nation.
Mr. President, I do not believe that Robert Gates is the right person to lead the CIA at this time. The cold war is over and it's time for some of the old warriors to rest. Now we must take a fresh new look at the world, think new thoughts and reassess the future role of the intelligence community. I urge my colleagues to vote against Robert Gates.


The Saddam/Iraq stuff gives me chills...

[lofter1]

Forking this into a new Thread (i.e.: "GATES: GWB's Sec. Def. #2") would seem in order.

I'll start one and copy / paste my posts.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/308-FRONT_LARGE.jpg.

[daver]

I'll miss ole Rummy...


The Unknown

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don’t know

We don’t know.

—Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

[Ninjahedge]

Man, whats with all the negative in the DN?

"Fallout" of the election? "new setback"?

It seems like they are calling the turnover a bad thing. Although it is for the current admin, I hope this is the beginning of a shakeup (and not just a swing ni the other direction).

[Ninjahedge]

I'll miss ole Rummy...


The Unknown

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don’t know

We don’t know.

—Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing


I know, I know.

You know?

[ZippyTheChimp]

Are you sure it wasn't
http://www.missioncreep.com/slackjaw/images/corey.jpg
Professor Irwin Corey

who also said:
If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.

[lofter1]

The poetic (?) insanity of DR ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq5mQLArjmo

Adios, MFer

History will tell his sorry story.

[MidtownGuy]

Yeah, good riddance to this creep.
Wish that mendacious worm-tongued dog Condi would be next.

[lofter1]

Fat chance of that ...

Rice and GWB's new Def Sec Gates are old pals (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=129942&postcount=5):

A longtime Soviet analyst who spent two decades at the CIA, Gates was a deputy to Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, during the elder Bush's administration. There, he worked closely with Baker and Condoleezza Rice.

[Ninjahedge]

More of the "in" crowd.

Thing is, is Bush in a bad position and not able to spin as blatant lies through his cabinet as what he did when his approval was much higher?

Even though this guy seems to be the same old, is this a face-up attempt to go to "plan B" without looking lik ethey are "flip flopping"?

I don't know. I just don't like this.

[lofter1]

Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld
Over Prison Abuse

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2006/0611/rumsfeld_sendoff1110.jpg
HARAZ N. GHANBARI / AP
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, September 2006

A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary
and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo

time.com (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html)
By ADAM ZAGORIN
Friday, Nov. 10, 2006

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ."

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.

Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a "a big, big problem." U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.

In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case — that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue — has been proven wrong.

"The utter and complete failure of U.S. authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S.-based non-profit helping to bring the legal action in Germany.

He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the U.S. of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in American custody going to back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, Ratner contends, the legal arguments underlying the German prosecutor's previous inaction no longer hold up.

Whatever the legal merits of the case, it is the latest example of efforts in Western Europe by critics of U.S. tactics in the war on terror to call those involved to account in court. In Germany, investigations are under way in parliament concerning cooperation between the CIA and German intelligence on rendition — the kidnapping of suspected terrorists and their removal to third countries for interrogation. Other legal inquiries involving rendition are under way in both Italy and Spain.

U.S. officials have long feared that legal proceedings against "war criminals" could be used to settle political scores. In 1998, for example, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — whose military coup was supported by the Nixon administration — was arrested in the U.K. and held for 16 months in an extradition battle led by a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with war crimes. He was ultimately released and returned to Chile. More recently, a Belgian court tried to bring charges against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against Palestinians. For its part, the Bush Administration has rejected adherence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute U.S. officials.

The ICC is the first permanent tribunal established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/images/blank.gif
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.

[BrooklynRider]

I don't think this guy was as much of an idiot as others seem to think. I do think he was operating with an undisclosed agenda that had nothing to do with United States interests and witha total disregard for the safety and lives of our troops. He was a well-connected, corporate shill, creating the chaos and distractions required for our treasury to be raided and emptied in the name of "defense" and the "war on terror." As usual, his party of pro-business activists stole the national savings, handed it to big business, and they got it all tax-free.

Not only a war criminal, but treasonous as well. They'll never get near him in the justice system if they fail to indict Cheney for the same crimes.

[Azazello]

I've been searching for the transcript - or even a news item - of one of Rumsfeld's post-resignation speeches. In it, he ONCE AGAIN links the reason we went to Iraq is to fight terrorism. Parting shot, I guess.

I heard about this during a NPR broadcast, but haven't been able to find it on their website. And searching the web for 'Rumseld resign speech' brings up much hilarity (going back over 3 years!), but not the goods I'm looking for.

Anybody got a link?

[lofter1]

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

reuters.com (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-11-25T164527Z_01_L25726413_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2)
Sat Nov 25, 2006

MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski's accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorized the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions."

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.

[Punzie]

Morbid curiosity got me wondering what was happening to ole Rummy these days... Ay-yay-yay! -- he just received a GOLD MEDAL from the Union League! But not without a scene:

Union League's Rumsfeld affair draws antiwar protest

By Kera Ritter
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
12/02/06

Philadelphia- As protests go, the one last night outside the venerable Union League was a mild affair, with about three dozen people shouting "Repent!" and "Shame!" After about an hour, it closed with the group singing a verse from "This Land is Your Land."

But what made it noteworthy were the people involved - war veterans, local antiwar activists and a member of President Bush's cabinet - and the location: outside one of the city's most distinctive buildings during a black-tie affair hosted by one of Philadelphia's most exclusive organizations.

The event was the awarding of the Union League's Gold Medal to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a black-tie ceremony closed to the public.
"I know a soldier who ran through a line of fire in the war and was denied a Bronze Medal," said Gordie Lachance, 25, who added that he served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. "But Rumsfeld is getting an award? I want to know what he did that was so special."

Rumsfeld resigned the day after the Nov. 7 general election, in which the President's party lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

Celeste Zappala wore a sign around her neck with a picture of her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, who was killed in Baghdad in April 2004. Zappala, one of about three-dozen protesters in front of the building, has been a vocal critic of the war. "It makes me ill that the Union League would give Donald Rumsfeld a medal for his disastrous leadership," Zappala said. "The people who deserve a medal are my son and the others who died or were wounded fighting this war."

Meanwhile, women in evening gowns and men in tuxedos navigated their way through the protesters to get inside with hardly an exchange. One man wearing rows of military ribbons on his tuxedo waved at protesters from inside the building. Rumsfeld was not visible from outside.

"This war in Iraq is an illegal war of aggression," said Chad Hetman, 34, a military officer who served on active duty from 1994 to 2002. "Rumsfeld is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis."

Hetman and Lachance both wore Army camouflage jackets and Hetman held a sign that read: "War Criminal Award."

Other protesters held candles and signs advocating peace.

Most passersby avoided making eye contact with the group but a SEPTA bus and cars honked their horns as they passed.


This affair was held in the middle of the final exam period for the university students in the Philly metro area. Coincidence?

[lofter1]

Rumsfeld's 'chief henchman' to step down

http://www.rawprint.com/images/rumsfeldcambone.jpg

rawstory.com (http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_intelligence_chief_to_resign_1201.html)
Mike Sheehan
December 1, 2006

Stephen A. Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense and a close associate of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is resigning effective December 31, according to a Department of Defense press release. Cambone's departure was not unexpected in the wake of Rumsfeld's resignation.

Cambone was Rumsfeld's intel chief at the Pentagon, serving since 2003.

Described by various sources as Rumsfeld's "chief henchman" and "enforcer," Cambone first achieved notoriety during Senate hearings involving Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, during which Cambone disagreed with Taguba's assertion that military intelligence was behind actions of prison guards at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Additionally, as Lolita C. Baldor writes (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152AP_Cambone_Pentagon_Resignation.html) in an Associated Press article, Pentagon intelligence during Cambone's administration had been sharply criticized over the revelation a year ago that "a Pentagon database of suspicious activities contained the names of anti-war groups that had been found not be security risks."

According to the press release, Cambone said, "It has been a distinct honor and privilege to serve the incredible men and women of our Armed Forces, the secretary of defense, and the President's national security team during the past several years." He added that he was "looking forward to spending more time with family."

[Punzie]

Rumsfeld Memo Proposed ‘Major Adjustment’ in Iraq

By MICHAEL R. GORDON (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/michael_r_gordon/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and DAVID S. CLOUD (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/david_s_cloud/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: December 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per) submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) was not working and called for a major course correction.

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ”
“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,” he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics.
The memo’s discussion of possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Mr. Rumsfeld’s frequent public suggestions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests from American military commanders.

It also puts on the table several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals, even as there have been recent pronouncements from American commanders emphasizing the need to maintain troop levels for the time being.

The memorandum sometimes has a finger-wagging tone, as Mr. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqis must “pull up their socks,” and suggests that reconstruction aid should be withheld in violent areas to avoid rewarding “bad behavior.”

Other options called for shrinking the number of bases, establishing benchmarks that would mark the Iraqis’ progress toward political, economic and security goals and conducting a “reverse embeds” program to attach Iraqi soldiers to American squads.

The memo was finished one day after President Bush interviewed Robert M. Gates (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/robert_m_gates/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the president of Texas A&M (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/texas_a_and_m_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org) University, as a potential successor to Mr. Rumsfeld and one day before the midterm elections. By then it was clear that the Republicans (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org) appeared likely to suffer a setback at the polls and that the administration was poised to begin reconsidering its Iraq strategy.

The memo provides no indication that Mr. Rumsfeld intended to leave his Pentagon post. It is unclear whether he knew at that point that he was about to be replaced, though the White House has said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld had a number of conversations on the matter.

Told that The New York Times had obtained a copy of it, a Pentagon spokesman, Eric Ruff, confirmed its authenticity. “As it became clear that people were considering options for the way forward, the secretary had some views on the subject, and this memo reflects those views,” he said.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld has been famous for his “snowflakes” — memos that drift down to the bureaucracy from on high and that are used to ask questions, stimulate debate and shape policy. Mr. Rumsfeld’s Nov. 6 memorandum, circulated as part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy, is written in that spirit and with the same blunt aphorisms that Mr. Rumsfeld frequently uses in public.

Unlike the lawyerly memo on Iraq policy submitted Nov. 8 by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, Mr. Rumsfeld’s listed more than a dozen “illustrative options” that the defense secretary did not endorse, but suggested merited serious consideration. “Many of these options could, and in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others,” Mr. Rumsfeld advised.

With Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation, the options no longer have the same weight. In recent weeks, some have been discarded as the Bush administration tries to adjust its military and political strategy in Iraq. But others, like increasing the number of advisers attached to Iraqi forces, live on and have also been recommended by others.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has presided over two wars and is one of the longest-serving Pentagon chiefs, is scheduled to leave when his designated successor, Mr. Gates, is confirmed by the Senate, expected later this month.

Titled “Iraq — Illustrative New Courses of Action,” the memo reflects mounting concern over a war that, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, has evolved from “major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence.”

The first section of the memo contains two pages of options that Mr. Rumsfeld describes as “above the line” ideas worthy of consideration. Some that Mr. Rumsfeld found intriguing appear to reflect his long-held view that the United States should use relatively modest force in intervening in foreign countries to avoid creating a dependency on American power. That approach, critics have charged, left the United States unprepared to deal with the chaos that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein/index.html?inline=nyt-per).

Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently emphasized the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq and the need to turn over responsibility to Iraqi authorities as quickly as possible. But he has also been a forceful, even cantankerous, defender of American policy, often insisting his critics were unduly pessimistic. On Oct. 31, just a week before finishing the memo, Mr. Rumsfeld told a radio interviewer, “I feel that we are making good progress with the piece of it the Defense Department has.”

One option Mr. Rumsfeld offered calls for modest troop withdrawals “so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.”

Another option calls for redeploying American troops from “vulnerable positions” in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a “quick reaction force.” That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Representative John P. Murtha (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_p_murtha/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a Pennsylvania Democrat, a plan that the White House has soundly rebuffed.

Still another option calls for consolidating the number of American bases in Iraq to 5 from 55 by July 2007, a considerable shrinking of the American footprint. At the same time, Mr. Rumsfeld all but dismisses the idea of setting a firm date for removing forces from Iraq, listing it as one of the less palatable ideas.

One of the more provocative options would punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by withdrawing economic assistance and security. “Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Falluja when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior,” the option reads. “No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence.”

Some military officers have said that the idea of denying assistance in some areas ignores the fact that many Iraqis are afraid to cooperate with the Americans for fear of retaliation by insurgents.

Falluja has been the focus of reconstruction efforts following an offensive by Americans that crippled city services and damaged scores of buildings, leaving the United States few options beyond rebuilding or evacuating the city. Now, it is considered by the Marines to be one of the few relatively stable areas in the dangerous Anbar Province. Many of the other towns in the region have become even more hostile because the economic assistance has been minimal, leaving the residents feeling neglected by the authorities in Baghdad, military officers say.


Then, too, work on infrastructure that sprawls across the country, like the electrical grid and the oil pipelines, network, cannot be limited to nonviolent areas.

“There is an element of throwing in the towel and effectively giving up on at least some areas of the country,” said James Dobbins, a former State Department official and director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND.

In any case, administration officials indicated this week that withholding assistance was not under serious consideration.

Reflecting exasperation with much of the American government, another option in the memo raises the possibility of using military reservists to “beef up” the Iraqi government’s ministries. “Give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it,” he writes, referring to other United States government agencies.

Taking a leaf out of Mr. Hussein’s book, Mr. Rumsfeld seemed to see some merit in the former dictator’s practice of paying Iraqi leaders. “Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did), to get them to help us get through this difficult period,” one option reads.

The list of favored options notably does not mention the “clear, hold and build” approach that the White House has touted as its strategy for waging counterinsurgency. That is a troop-intensive approach that calls for clearing contested areas with American and Iraqi troops, holding them with American and Iraqi forces and then carrying out reconstruction programs to win support. Nor does the list make the withdrawal of American forces explicitly contingent on improving conditions in Iraq.

The final page of the memo is a brief list of six “less attractive” options, which Mr. Rumsfeld describes as “below the line.” They include an “aggressive federalism plan,” an international conference modeled on the Dayton accords that produced an agreement on Bosnia and an idea that is currently being seriously discussed by senior administration officials: temporarily sending 20,000 additional American forces or more to Baghdad to try to improve security there and regain momentum.

Moving a large fraction of American forces to Baghdad to “attempt to control it,” Mr. Rumsfeld writes without further elaboration, would be “below the line.”

James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html?hp&ex=1165122000&en=c81ca1ad895daf65&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Punzie]

Rumsfeld’s Memo of Options for Iraq War

Published: December 3, 2006
[The New York Times]

Following is the text of a classified Nov. 6 memorandum that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per) sent to the White House suggesting new options in Iraq. The memorandum was sent one day before the midterm Congressional elections and two days before Mr. Rumsfeld resigned.

Nov. 6, 2006

SUBJECT: Iraq — Illustrative New Courses of Action

The situation in Iraq has been evolving, and U.S. forces have adjusted, over time, from major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence. In my view it is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough. Following is a range of options:

ILLUSTRATIVE OPTIONS

Above the Line: (Many of these options could and, in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others)

¶Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made).

¶Significantly increase U.S. trainers and embeds, and transfer more U.S. equipment to Iraqi Security forces (ISF), to further accelerate their capabilities by refocusing the assignment of some significant portion of the U.S. troops currently in Iraq.

¶Initiate a reverse embeds program, like the Korean Katusas, by putting one or more Iraqi soldiers with every U.S. and possibly Coalition squad, to improve our units’ language capabilities and cultural awareness and to give the Iraqis experience and training with professional U.S. troops.

¶Aggressively beef up the Iraqi MOD and MOI, and other Iraqi ministries critical to the success of the ISF — the Iraqi Ministries of Finance, Planning, Health, Criminal Justice, Prisons, etc. — by reaching out to U.S. military retirees and Reserve/National Guard volunteers (i.e., give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it.)

¶Conduct an accelerated draw-down of U.S. bases. We have already reduced from 110 to 55 bases. Plan to get down to 10 to 15 bases by April 2007, and to 5 bases by July 2007.

¶Retain high-end SOF capability and necessary support structure to target Al Qaeda (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org), death squads, and Iranians in Iraq, while drawing down all other Coalition forces, except those necessary to provide certain key enablers for the ISF.

¶Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help and that actively cooperate, with the stipulation being that unless they cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province.

¶Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fallujah when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our reconstruction efforts in those parts of Iraq that are behaving, and invest and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. As the old saying goes, “If you want more of something, reward it; if you want less of something, penalize it.” No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence.

¶Position substantial U.S. forces near the Iranian and Syrian borders to reduce infiltration and, importantly, reduce Iranian influence on the Iraqi Government.

¶Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. — and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance.

¶Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.

¶Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein/index.html?inline=nyt-per) did), to get them to help us get through this difficult period.

¶Initiate a massive program for unemployed youth. It would have to be run by U.S. forces, since no other organization could do it.

¶Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not “lose.”

¶Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist.

Below the Line (less attractive options):

¶Continue on the current path.

¶Move a large fraction of all U.S. Forces into Baghdad to attempt to control it.

¶Increase Brigade Combat Teams and U.S. forces in Iraq substantially.

¶Set a firm withdrawal date to leave. Declare that with Saddam gone and Iraq a sovereign nation, the Iraqi people can govern themselves. Tell Iran and Syria to stay out.

¶Assist in accelerating an aggressive federalism plan, moving towards three separate states — Sunni, Shia, and Kurd.

¶Try a Dayton-like process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html

(http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html)

[lofter1]

Judge weighs torture claim vs. Rumsfeld

Ventura County Star (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DETAINEE_ABUSE?SITE=CAVEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)
By MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writer
December 8, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Friday appeared reluctant to give Donald H. Rumsfeld immunity from torture allegations, yet said it would be unprecedented to let the departing defense secretary face a civil trial.

"What you're asking for has never been done before," U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan told lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The group is suing on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lawsuit contends the men were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

If the suit were to go forward, it could force Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.

Rumsfeld, who leaves the Defense Department on Dec. 18, told Pentagon employees and reporters Friday that the day he learned about abuses at Abu Ghraib was his worst day in office.

"I remember being stunned by the news of the abuse at Abu Ghraib," Rumsfeld said. "And then watching so many determined people spend so many months trying to figure out exactly how in the world something like that could have happened, and how to make it right."

Lawyers for the ACLU and Human Rights First, however, argue that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional rights of prisoners.

Foreigners outside the United States are not normally afforded the same protections as U.S. citizens, and Hogan said he was wary about extending the Constitution across the globe.

Doing so, he said, might subject government officials to all sorts of political suits. Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him murdered.

"How do you control that?" Hogan asked. "Where does it stop? Does it stop at the secretary of defense? Does it stop at the president? How does this work?"

The Justice Department argues that is exactly why government officials generally are immune from suits related to their jobs. By allowing the case to proceed, Hogan would make all future military operations subject to second-guessing by the courts, the government contends.

"We cannot have courts interfering with core military functions," Deputy Assistant Attorney General C. Frederick Beckner III said.

Hogan questioned the scope of that immunity. He said freedom from torture is a basic right accepted by the United States and all civilized nations.

"Would you take the same policy if the argument was one of genocide?" Hogan asked. "Are you saying there could be no inquiry done?"

Beckner said abuse claims should be handled by the military, which has prosecuted more than 100 such cases. In his farewell speech Friday, Rumsfeld said such prosecutions demonstrated "how our democracy deals openly and decisively with such egregious wrongdoing."

Lawyers for the civil rights groups, which have criticized the military's prosecution record, said the government is trying to operate a "rights-free" zone overseas.

"The defendants had a duty to deter and punish acts of torture and they did 180 degrees opposite of that: They encouraged and directed that torture," lawyer Paul Hoffman said.

Hogan said torture is a crime against mankind, but he did not see how the Constitution applied to foreigners held in overseas military prisons.

Hogan said he would rule quickly on whether to dismiss the case; he did not make a decision Friday.

The other officials named in the suit are: retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, former Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski and Col. Thomas M. Pappas.

Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, was demoted last year and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army last month, calling his career a casualty of the prison scandal.

Pappas, the former top-ranking intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony about the abuse.

© 2006 The Associated Press

[lofter1]

The Nuremberg process happened in my country. It was painful for us. But we absorbed it. It became a part of our legacy. An important part of our legacy. We will not forget it.

But I have to ask you: why has your country forgotten?"

Andrew Sullivan (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/12/quote_for_the_d_12.html)
09 Dec 2006 04:50 pm

Scott Horton (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/12/question-for-december-7.html), in a speech at the New School, on the significance of December 7 in American history:
"Now I'd like you to use your imagination for a second. Let's assume the unthinkable: that America had embraced Mr. Bush's "Program" in the Second World War; that German, Italian and Japanese fighters had been waterboarded, subjected to the cold cell and techniques like "long time standing." Do any of you think for even a second that these nations would have been our allies and friends in the following generations? Think of how much darker, colder and more hate-filled our world would be than it is today...A short time ago, in Germany, I spoke with one of the senior advisors of Chancellor Angela Merkel. I noted that a criminal complaint had been filed against Donald Rumsfeld and a number of others invoking universal jurisdiction for war crimes offenses. How would the chancellor see this, I asked? There was a long pause, and I fully expected to get a brush-off response. But what came was very surprising."You must remember," said the advisor, "that my chancellor was born and raised in a totalitarian state. She cannot be indifferent to questions of this sort. In fact, she views them as matters of the utmost gravity and they will be treated that way. The Nuremberg process happened in my country. It was painful for us. But we absorbed it. It became a part of our legacy. An important part of our legacy. We will not forget it. But I have to ask you: why has your country forgotten?" Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.

[ZippyTheChimp]

December 16, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Farewell, Dense Prince

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

James Baker ran after W. with a butterfly net for a while, but it is now clear that the inmates are still running the asylum.

The Defiant Ones came striding from the Pentagon yesterday, the troika of wayward warriors marching abreast in their dark suits and power ties. W., Rummy and Dick Cheney were so full of quick-draw confidence that they might have been sauntering down the main drag of Deadwood.

Far from being run out of town, the defense czar who rivals Robert McNamara for deadly incompetence has been on a victory lap in Baghdad, Mosul and Washington. Yesterday’s tribute had full military honors, a color guard, a 19-gun salute, an Old Guard performance with marching musicians — including piccolo players — in Revolutionary War costumes, John Philip Sousa music and the chuckleheaded neocons and ex-Rummy deputies who helped screw up the occupation, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, cheering in the audience.

It was surreal: the septuagenarian who arrogantly dismissed initial advice to send more troops to secure Iraq, being praised as “the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had” by his pal, the vice president, even as a desperate White House drafted ways to reinvade Iraq by sending more troops in a grasping-at-straws effort to reverse the chaos caused by Rummy’s mistakes.

Just imagine the send-off a defense secretary would have gotten who hadn’t sabotaged the Army, Iraq, global security, our chance to get Osama, our moral credibility, the deficit and American military confidence.

Even Joyce Rumsfeld got a Distinguished Public Service Award ribbon placed around her neck. The grandiose ceremony featured everything but the gold-plated matching set of pistols Tommy Franks, another failed warrior, and his wife, Cathy, recently received from a weapons manufacturer. (His had four stars and diamonds; hers, rubies and their marriage date.)

W. never seems as alarmed about the devastation in Iraq as he should be. He told People magazine, “I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume,” and he told Brit Hume that his presidency was “a joyful experience.”

He slacked off on his slacker effort to form a new Iraq plan. (Can’t these guys ever order pizzas and pull some all-nighters?) Mr. Bush was busy this week hosting Christmas parties for a press corps he disdains; convening a malaria conference at the National Geographic with Dr. Burke of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Isaiah Washington; and presiding over a hero’s departure for the defense secretary he actually dumped, not because of incompetence but for political expediency.

The Rummy hoopla was a way for W. to signal his decision to shred the Baker-Hamilton study, after reportedly denouncing it as a flaming cow pie. Condi Rice signaled the same, telling The Washington Post that she did not want to negotiate with Syria and Iran, as the Iraq Study Group had proposed, because “the compensation” might be too high.

The Democrats thought that when they had won the election, they won the debate on the war and they had W. cornered. But the president is leaning toward surging over the Democrats, voters, Baker and the Bush 41 crowd and some of his own commanders.

W. seems gratified by the idea that rather than having his ears boxed by his father’s best friend, he’s going to go down swinging, or double down, in the metaphor du jour, on his macho bet in Iraq. He’s reading about Harry Truman and casting himself as a feisty Truman, but he’s heading toward late L.B.J. The White House budget office is studying how much it will cost to finance The Surge, an infusion of 20,000 to 50,000 troops into Baghdad to make one last try at “victory.” The policy would devolve from “We stand down as they stand up” to “We stand up more and maybe someday they will, too.”

Some serving commanders are not in favor of The Surge because they fret that it will infantilize Iraqis even more about assuming responsibility for their own security. They also fear that the insurgents, who have nowhere to go, will outwait our troops.

But W. would rather take a risk in Iraq than risk being a wimp. So he continued to wrap himself in muscular delusions, asserting that on Rummy’s watch, “the United States military helped the Iraqi people establish a constitutional democracy in the heart of the Middle East, a watershed event in the story of freedom.”

Dick Cheney offered this praise to his friend: “On the professional side, I would not be where I am today but for the confidence that Don first placed in me those many years ago.”

Alas, we wouldn’t be where we are today, either.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security

Pinning It All on Rumsfeld

If Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) thinks that the buck stops with Donald Rumsfeld, he is not qualified to be President.

On the campaign trail, McCain labeled the former Secretary of Defense the worst in history Monday.

Sure there is a lot to criticize about Rumsfeld.

What I detect, though, is a virus that is also spreading through the Pentagon right now, in which the former defense secretary is the excuse and the whipping boy for all of America's problems.

Rumsfeld's missteps indeed made a major contribution to the mess in Iraq and the mishandling of the "war" against terrorism. In blaming Rumsfeld, however, McCain sidesteps the faulty logic of American interest and necessity that justified the war in the first place. And he excuses the larger national security team who equally has responsibility for the war and its subsequent design. Finally, McCain ignores the Commander-in-Chief: He will later need Bush on the campaign trail.

The Pentagon leadership is similarly quick to pin it all on Rumsfeld, a monumental passing of the buck that excuses those in uniform at the top who made their own bad decisions or rolled over and played dead in the presence of a strong civilian leader.

Even factually, it is wrong to say that Rumsfeld led everyone astray, that he ignored military advice, that he screwed up what otherwise would have been a successful enterprise.

More fundamentally, what is wrong with the anti-Rumsfeld virus is this: It is just too convenient of a way for the military leadership, the Congress, and the national security establishment to move forward without accountability.

Speaking in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina on Monday, presidential candidate McCain said that the Iraq war had been "mismanaged" for years and blamed Rumsfeld.

"I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said. "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement" of the war, he continued.

McCain's main complaint was that Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense stood in the way of sending sufficient troops to Iraq. "I have been saying for 3 1/2 years that we would be in this sad situation and this critical situation we are in today," McCain told the mostly retiree audience.

The Arizona senator's position is that American can "succeed" in Iraq with a greater number of soldiers and Marines, and with a new strategy. McCain's suggestion is that the larger force he wants will not just "succeed" in creating the stability and space for Iraqi forces to take over responsibility so that U.S. forces can come home (the Bush strategy), but that the United States could actually "win" in a total war sense.

McCain's reading of the situation in Iraq is dead wrong in this regard: There is no conventional enemy to defeat any longer in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and other terrorists and foreign fighters in the country are not an army that will be vanquished if we just throw more resources into the fight.

McCain's stance, more hawkish than the Bush administration, might appeal to those who falsely think that the problem in Iraq is "mismanagement."

McCain might be right that in 2004 - 2005 insufficient U.S. forces contributed to the failure of creating the kind of street-level stability and tight control that Iraqis were used to under Saddam Hussein. This is similar to a liberal critique of the Iraq war as well -- had the administration just listened to Army chief of staff Gen. Rick Shinseki, who opined that a much larger force was needed for peacekeeping, everything would have been different.

The larger force, though, was recommended based on Army doctrine and peacekeeping models and experiences in Bosnia and elsewhere, not because of some special insight about Iraq as a country. In other words, mismanagement isn't (solely) responsible for where we are today. The administration, the Congress, the intelligence community, and most of the national security world misread the country, the people, the religious, tribal and sectarian divides, and the impact that regime change and American occupation would have.

A larger force, perhaps the force the corporate Army would have recommended or the one McCain desires, would have brought with it additional problems, the most important of which is an anti-occupation backlash. Sure, the year of relative calm between April, 2003 and April, 2004 might have been extended, but a huge American presence in the heart of the Middle East, with even more military resources thrown into Iraq (and thus diverted from Afghanistan and other tasks) could have just as easily produced the same magnet effect our forces now face, fueling terrorism recruitments.

Still, more troops back then might have salvaged this ill conceieved war. More troops now ignores the changed circumstances and the reality that it is not for America to any longer force stability on Iraq. The Bush administration seems to recognize that, and that is why it has a "surge" that is quite modest, one that seeks to balance deploying enough military force to turn the tide and yet not so much that it is in itself an irritant.

Iraq has a democratically elected government, and despite its sectarian leanings and its questionable competence, it isn't any longer within America's power to decide how the fighting will proceed or determine what the outcome will be. Again, to be fair, the Bush administration seems to recognize that, even if most in America and much of the world thinks that it is still America's war and America is calling all of the shots.

To say that this is all Rumsfeld's fault is a gross miscarriage of justice. Does national security maven and former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain not understand these realities or is he just running for president?

By William M. Arkin | February 21, 2007

[MidtownGuy]

McCain is a slithering sycophant. I pray he is not our next president, since he's as mendacious and opportunistic as the current crowd.
I lost all respect for him some years back. When he was running against Bush in the primary, his wife and child were slimed in a push poll. After the primary, there was McCain, kissing Bush's ass with relish. He's not even a real man if he can't stand by his family