In Defense Of Rummy...

[Nbadan]

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y30/rsan2332/bushdod1.jpg
Your doing a heck of a job, Rummy!


Bush Speaks Out for Rumsfeld
'My Full Support' For Defense Chief
By Peter Baker and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A01


President Bush interrupted his Easter vacation yesterday to offer an unequivocal vote of confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a move aimed at countering a growing wave of criticism from retired generals calling for the Pentagon chief to resign over his leadership of the Iraq war.

In an unusual statement issued from Camp David, where he had already retired for the weekend, Bush stepped directly into the debate over Rumsfeld's performance to offer his "strong support" and make it clear he will keep the embattled defense secretary. Rumsfeld separately declared that he will not go.

I have seen firsthand how Don relies upon our military commanders in the field and at the Pentagon to make decisions about how best to complete these missions" of fighting terrorists while simultaneously transforming the military, Bush said. "Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation."

The president's decision to interject himself so forcefully stands in contrast to his mild reaction to recent reports of dissatisfaction with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and reflected a calculation by Bush and his advisers that attacks on Rumsfeld by prominent former military commanders strike at the heart of his presidency. As Bush's choice to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rumsfeld serves as his proxy, and most of the judgments that have come under fire were shared by the president and Vice President Cheney as well.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401649.html)

On the local wing-nut station, the new night kid was actually argueing last night that Rummy was right to go in with less troops than many generals were recommending for Iraq because that way Iraqis would have a chance to 'work for their own freedom', which according to him, wouldn't have happened if the U.S. had gone in with enough troops to protect Iraq's borders from the rash of insurgents, and Saddam's abandoned weapons caches that insurgents are now using to attack U.S. forces. Not one of his brain-dead wingnut callers challenged him, which leads me to believe, his relatives must be the only one's calling and OAI is a joke.


:lol What a dumbass!

[Nbadan]

What Rumsfeld knew
Salon
Interviews with high-ranking military officials shed new light on the role Rumsfeld played in the harsh treatment of a Guantánamo detainee.
By Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin
April 14, 2006 |


Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. (sound familiar?) He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.

.....................

These disclosures are contained in a Dec. 20, 2005, Army inspector general's report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.

In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."

Salon (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/04/14/rummy/)

It was all little Lyndie England!

:rolleyes

[Nbadan]

Desert Rats Leave The Sinking Ship
Why Rumsfeld Should Not Resign
The Guardian - Comment
Friday, April 14, 2006
By Greg Palast


Let me tell you a story about the Secretary of Defense you didn't read in the New York Times, related to me by General Jay Garner, the man our president placed in Baghdad as the US' first post-invasion viceroy.

Garner arrived in Kuwait City in March 2003 working under the mistaken notion that when George Bush called for democracy in Iraq, the President meant the Iraqis could choose their own government. Misunderstanding the President's true mission, General Garner called for Iraqis to hold elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the cities to a desert base. "It's their country," the General told me of the Iraqis. "And," he added, most ominously, "their oil."

Let's not forget: it's all about the oil. I showed Garner a 101-page plan for Iraq's economy drafted secretly by neo-cons at the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon, calling for "privatization" (i.e. the sale) of "all state assets ... especially in the oil and oil-supporting industries." See it here. The General knew of the plans and he intended to shove it where the Iraqi sun don't shine. Garner planned what he called a "Big Tent" meeting of Iraqi tribal leaders to plan elections. By helping Iraqis establish their own multi-ethnic government -- and this was back when Sunnis, Shias and Kurds were on talking terms -- knew he could get the nation on its feet peacefully before a welcomed "liberation" turned into a hated "occupation."

But, Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab.

On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, "Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired."

Rummy replaced Garner, a man with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq, with green-boots Paul Bremer, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Bremer cancelled the Big Tent meeting of Iraqis and postponed elections for a year; then he issued 100 orders, like some tin-pot pasha, selling off Iraq's economy to U.S. and foreign operators, just as Rumsfeld's neo-con clique had desired.

Reading this, it sounds like I should applaud the six generals' call for Rumfeld's ouster. Forget it.

For a bunch of military hotshots, they sure can't shoot straight. They're wasting all their bullets on the decoy. They've gunned down the puppet instead of the puppeteers.

There's no way that Rumsfeld could have yanked General Garner from Baghdad without the word from The Bunker. Nothing moves or breathes or spits in the Bush Administration without Darth Cheney's growl of approval. And ultimately, it's the Commander-in-Chief who's chiefly in command.

Greg Palast (http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=493&row=1)

[boutons_]

Behind the Military Revolt

By Richard Holbrooke
Sunday, April 16, 2006; B07

The calls by a growing number of recently retired generals for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have created the most serious public confrontation between the military and an administration since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951. In that epic drama, Truman was unquestionably correct -- MacArthur, the commanding general in Korea and a towering World War II hero, publicly challenged Truman's authority and had to be removed. Most Americans rightly revere the principle that was at stake: civilian control over the military. But this situation is quite different.

First, it is clear that the retired generals -- six so far, with more likely to come -- surely are speaking for many of their former colleagues, friends and subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a conventional wisdom is formed. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the planning period for the war in Iraq, made this clear in an extraordinary, at times emotional, article in Time magazine this past week when he said he was writing "with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership." He went on to "challenge those still in uniform . . . to give voice to those who can't -- or don't have the opportunity to -- speak."

These generals are not newly minted doves or covert Democrats. (In fact, one of the main reasons this public explosion did not happen earlier was probably concern by the generals that they would seem to be taking sides in domestic politics.) They are career men, each with more than 30 years in service, who swore after Vietnam that, as Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs, "when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons." Yet, as Newbold admits, it happened again. In the public comments of the retired generals one can hear a faint sense of guilt that, having been taught as young officers that the Vietnam-era generals failed to stand up to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson, they did the same thing.

Second, it is also clear that the target is not just Rumsfeld. Newbold hints at this; others are more explicit in private. But the only two people in the government higher than the secretary of defense are the president and vice president. They cannot be fired, of course, and the unspoken military code normally precludes direct public attacks on the commander in chief when troops are under fire. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course: In addition to MacArthur, there was Gen. George McClellan vs. Lincoln; and on a lesser note, Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, who was fired for attacking President Jimmy Carter over Korea policy. But such challenges are rare enough to be memorable, and none of these solo rebellions metastasized into a group, a movement that can fairly be described as a revolt.)

This has put President Bush and his administration in a hellish position
at a time when security in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. If Bush yields to the generals' revolt, he will appear to have caved in to pressure from what Rumsfeld disingenuously describes as "two or three retired generals out of thousands." But if he keeps Rumsfeld, he risks more resignations -- perhaps soon -- from generals who heed Newbold's stunning call that as officers they took an oath to the Constitution and should now speak out on behalf of the troops in harm's way and to save the institution that he feels is in danger of falling back into the disarray of the post-Vietnam era.

Facing this dilemma, Bush's first reaction was exactly what anyone who knows him would have expected: He issued strong affirmations of "full support" for Rumsfeld, even going out of his way to refer to the secretary of defense as "Don" several times in his statements. (This was in marked contrast to his tepid comments on the future of his other embattled Cabinet officer, Treasury Secretary John Snow. Washington got the point.)

In the end, the case for changing the secretary of defense seems to me to be overwhelming. I do not reach this conclusion simply because of past mistakes, simply because "someone must be held accountable." Many people besides Rumsfeld were deeply involved in the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of them remain in power, and some are in uniform.

The major reason the nation needs a new defense secretary is far more urgent. Put simply, the failed strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be fixed as long as Rumsfeld remains at the epicenter of the chain of command. Rumsfeld's famous "long screwdriver," with which he sometimes micromanages policy, now thwarts the top-to-bottom reexamination of strategy that is absolutely essential in both war zones. Lyndon Johnson understood this in 1968 when he eased another micromanaging secretary of defense, McNamara, out of the Pentagon and replaced him with Clark M. Clifford. Within weeks, Clifford had revisited every aspect of policy and begun the long, painful process of unwinding the commitment. Today, those decisions are still the subject of intense dispute, and there are many differences between the two situations. But one thing was clear then and is clear today: Unless the secretary of defense is replaced, the policy will not and cannot change.

That first White House reaction will not be the end of the story. If more angry generals emerge -- and they will -- if some of them are on active duty, as seems probable; if the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan does not turn around (and there is little reason to think it will, alas), then this storm will continue until finally it consumes not only Donald Rumsfeld. The only question is: Will it come so late that there is no longer any hope of salvaging something in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, writes a monthly column for The Post.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[RandomGuy]

It brings up a very cogent point:

If Rumsfeld is so energetic and involved, as Bush says, how did Abu Gharaib happen without him knowing something was going on?

I have no doubts that Rummy works a lot.

I have a LOT of doubts as to Rumsfeld's ability to make good decisions. I think that the politicos are too much in the driver's seat and ignore good military advice when they find it might be inconvenient for domestic politics.

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[pache100]

I respect Rumsfeld for one thing and one thing only. On 9-11, he ran from his office to the crash site at the Pentagon and was digging through debris with his bare hands for survivors. His security contingent made numerous efforts to drag him away from the danger and he would not stop, he was like a man possessed. Finally, the carried him bodily to a chopper and got him away from the Pentagon.

I have always wondered what his motive for that behavior was. Guilt? Photo op? Genuine compassion? Doubt that last one. I don't know what his motive was, but I respect his effort that day.

Other than that, he is a pompous ass, a political freak, a pure turd, and I come almost as close to hating his guts as I do George Bush's.

[mookie2001]

^how many did he dig out?

[Yonivore]

From this morning's Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114522916171427157.html?mod=opinion_main_comment aries) (subscription required):


Since our nation's founding, the principle of civilian control over the military has been a centerpiece of our system of government. Under our constitutional system, it places elected and appointed government leaders in charge. American soldiers are bound by this tradition to subordinate themselves to civilian authority. We give advice but it is ultimately up to civilian leaders to make key strategic and policy decisions. Unlike many other democracies, this is one important reason why we have never been ruled by the military, and have been the most successful country the world has ever seen.

Some critics suggest that the calls by the six retired generals signify widespread discontent in the military with Secretary Rumsfeld's leadership. It is preposterous for them to suggest that this small group represents the views of the 1.4 million men and women serving on active duty or the 7,000 retired generals and flag officers who respect, understand and appreciate the established American tradition of the military being subordinate to civilian control and direction....

Despite criticisms, Mr. Rumsfeld is arguably one of the most effective secretaries of defense our nation has ever had. Under his watch, the U.S. military has been transforming; it brilliantly deposed Mullah Omar's barbaric Taliban regime (Osama bin Laden's sanctuary) and Saddam Hussein's ruthless Baathist regime, freeing 50 million people from oppression and placing the countries on democratic paths. With these actions, terrorists have been denied secure home bases. These are a few key factors why terrorists have been unable to attack the American homeland again. The policy and forward strategy implemented by Secretary Rumsfeld has taken the fight to the enemy as did the nation in World War II and the Cold War.

Some, like Generals Zinni, Newbold, Eaton, Batiste, Swannack, Riggs and others, may not like Secretary Rumsfeld's leadership style. They certainly have the right as private citizens now to speak their minds. Some may feel that he's been unfair, arrogant and autocratic to some senior officers. But those sentiments and feelings are irrelevant. In the end he's the man in charge and the buck stops with him. As long as he retains the confidence of the commander in chief he will make the important calls at the top of the department of defense. That's the way America works. So let's all breathe into a bag and get on with winning the global war against radical Islam. In time the electorate, and history, will grade their decisions.
Lt. Gen. Crosby (ret.) is former deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. Lt. Gen. McInerney (ret.) is former assistant vice chief of staff, U.S. Air Force. Maj. Gen. Moore (ret.), U.S. Air Force, was director of Central Command during Operation Desert Storm. Maj. Gen. Vallely (ret.) is former deputy commander of the U.S. Army, Pacific.

Here's what Rummy thinks:

A Reaffirming Conversation With Donald Rumsfeld (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/04/a_reaffirming_conversation_wit.html)

Relevant excerpt:


Of course, I had to ask about the growing list of ex-generals cashing book-advance checks for spitting on the war.

He said they constitute a tiny fraction of generals under his supervision, and, in the case of the most recent and noteworthy, Tony Zinni, he shot back: "I've never met the man." Translation: "Don't waste my time with the pre-9/11-era criticisms of Bill Clinton's Centcom commander."

[Vashner]

They are just trying to take a chain out of Bush's armor.

Rummy on RUsh right now...

[boutons_]

What red herring/straw man bullshit.

I haven't heard any bitching generals, or anybody else, complaining about civilian control of the military. They are complaining about the INCOMPETENCE of the civilians controlling the military. The phone Iraq was launched with an underwhelming, understaffed military, post-war planning (eg, there would be no insurgency, there would be no problems with security of reconstructions) was totally wrong. Many of these fuckups were foreseen by the military, were based on lessons learned BY MILITARY in VN (dubya and dickhead evaded VN service) whose input was apparently ignored.

The Repug politicians told Rummy to start a phony war to win the 2004 election.
The military got fucked, is being fucked still.

The terrorists continue, the USA is no safer, after 10s of 1000s of military casulties and $1T burned up (but paid to Repug MIC companies at high margins).

[Yonivore]

The terrorists continue, the USA is no safer, after 10s of 1000s of military casulties and $1T burned up (but paid to Repug MIC companies at high margins).
Well, that certainly explains last weeks terrorist attack on...wait a minute...there hasn't been a terrorist attack on the U.S. since 2001.

[boutons_]

"there hasn't been a terrorist attack on the U.S. since 2001."

That one was on the Repug's watch. The Repugs were fully responsible for defending America then. They didn't.

Since 2001, the Repugs have started a phony war whose costs in US and other lives and $$$ far exceeded any damage done to USA by the terrorists attacks of 1993, 1995, and 2001.

[Yonivore]

"there hasn't been a terrorist attack on the U.S. since 2001."

That one was on the Repug's watch. The Repugs were fully responsible for defending America then. They didn't.

Since 2001, the Repugs have started a phony war whose costs in US and other lives and $$$ far exceeded any damage done to USA by the terrorists attacks of 1993, 1995, and 2001.
They all entered the country during Clinton's watch. Jamie Gorelick protected them with her "wall" between the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

You're an idiot.

[DarkReign]

Wait...so since there hasnt been a terrorist attack on American soil since 2001, then it must be directly related to the efforts of HSA and the Bush Administration?

What kind of fucked up, telescopic thinking is that?!

[boutons_]

Did anybody hear the Repugs talk about terrorism as the USA's top or near-top priority between Jan and Sep 01? Did dubya and dickhead, with all their secret NIE's etc, have the FBI/CIA/NSA on their anti-terrorists tip-toes through the summer of 2001 when all the "planes into buldings" chatter was going on? Were the Repugs "trustworthy on national security" between Jan and Sep 1001?

All the Repugs did prior to 9/11 was go after their entire objective for getting elected: cut taxes for the rich + corps, and rammed it through, then took the summer off.

The war on terror is a huge distraction to the Repugs' sole priority of protecting and enriching the rich and corps.

Wall or no wall between intelligence and enforcement, there was plenty of intelligence around that something was up, but the Repug administration did fuck all to protect USA.

[Nbadan]

First of all, Clinton had Muhammed Atta under FBI survellience until he left the U.S. in the fall of 1999. Atta went to Germany and met with the Hansburg Al-Queda cell that got busted by German police. Atta was under German secret police survellience the whole time. Atta re-entered the U.S. in January of 2000, under Dubya's watch. The FBI failed to continue their survellience on Atta despite warnings from German authorities as Atta being a 'person of intrest'.

This whole 'intelligence wall' bullshit never really existed, it's all a smoke-screen to diffuse responsiblity. The fact is, Atta should have been under FBI survellience when he re-entered the U.S., or better yet, he should never have been allowed to re-enter the country in the first place. There is much we don't know about Muhammed Atta, for instance, his relationship with Amanda Keller, the stripper in Venice who has said in interviews that Atta was dripping in cash and cocaine in the club where she worked (some of you will remember how that whole situation was quickly swept under the rug by the corporate media) Kinda strange behavior for a bunch of 'religious zealots'.

[Vashner]

The whole media just spewes out this we are loosing crap. Truth is we are putting a hurt on them. Just takes time like hunting deer.

There really is nothing for us to blow up so we have to bait the fuckers the kill them.

Like corn feeder but Ramadi feeders.

[George W Bush]

The whole media just spewes out this we are loosing crap. Truth is we are putting a hurt on them. Just takes time like hunting deer.

There really is nothing for us to blow up so we have to bait the fuckers the kill them.

Like corn feeder but Ramadi feeders.

LOSE, LOSING, LOSER!

:madrun
Even I'm not that dumb. (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38278)

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[Yonivore]

Atta re-entered the U.S. in January of 2000, under Dubya's watch.
Correct me if I'm wrong but, President Bush was inaugurated on January 21, 2001; a full year after you claim Atta re-entered the U.S. And, even if you got your year wrong and it was January of 2001 -- was it before January 21?

[xrayzebra]

I just wonder. How many Generals are they in the military and retired. Several
thousand I would imagine. And only six are bitching, and half of them have
books coming out I would imagine. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

[Yonivore]

I just wonder. How many Generals are they in the military and retired. Several thousand I would imagine. And only six are bitching, and half of them have books coming out I would imagine. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?
4,700

[xrayzebra]

4,700


Sounds about right.

[boutons_]

Whatever happened before 21 Jan 2001 became the responsibility of the Repugs on 21 Jan 2001, along with them inheriting the responsiblity for the all the agencies that fall under the Exec branch.

The Repugs were in power for 9 months before WTC attack. They could have prevented it if they had been trustworthy with national security, but they weren't. The Repugs failed miserably in that responsibility while rammig through the most unfair taxcuts in US History. They were strongly warned about al-Quaida by the outgoing Clinton gang, but anything coming from the Dems, or, even worse, Europeans, had to be ignored on principle. Polarizing, deaf and dumb from their own hubris blowing out their assholes, the Repugs fucked America.

[RandomGuy]

I respect Rumsfeld for one thing and one thing only. On 9-11, he ran from his office to the crash site at the Pentagon and was digging through debris with his bare hands for survivors. His security contingent made numerous efforts to drag him away from the danger and he would not stop, he was like a man possessed. Finally, the carried him bodily to a chopper and got him away from the Pentagon.

I have always wondered what his motive for that behavior was. Guilt? Photo op? Genuine compassion? Doubt that last one. I don't know what his motive was, but I respect his effort that day.

Other than that, he is a pompous ass, a political freak, a pure turd, and I come almost as close to hating his guts as I do George Bush's.

I agree with this assessment. Rummy got a lot of points in my book for helping to carry the stretchers, but I thought it very strange that the guy in charge of the place would do such a thing.

His actions that day, while admirable, really point out the failings of his leadership:

"nanomanagement"

He can't delegate things he should, and gets lost in details at the expense of the big picture.

Big picture was that he should have been giving orders and getting his organization (the pentagon) in gear. That is the job of leaders, and their role in organizations.

Something a former general said hits home for me: Rumsfeld fell in love with his Iraq plan and tuned out anything outside of that plan. He developed a myopia that has literally killed people.

[boutons_]

April 19, 2006

Here's Donny! In His Defense, a Show Is Born

By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, April 18 — It has become a daily ritual, the defense of the defense secretary, complete with praise from serving generals, tributes from the president and, from the man on the spot, doses of charm, combativeness and even some humility.

A session on Tuesday was the third time in five days that Donald H. Rumsfeld had sought to make a public case to remain as defense secretary.

"There are no indispensable men," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

But the Bush administration sought to drive home the message that Mr. Rumsfeld was not going anywhere, no matter what critics might desire.

Again, Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was at Mr. Rumsfeld's side, a visual prop to counter the message from a half-dozen or so retired generals that Mr. Rumsfeld should step down.

President Bush, having defended Mr. Rumsfeld on Friday from Camp David, had appeared before the cameras hours earlier, to make the case in person.

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best," Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. "And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

Such extended repeated public displays of self-defense are not the norm in Washington, where beleaguered officeholders usually seek to maintain the pretense that criticism does not matter. Those who do respond most often use surrogates to extol their virtues.

But the extraordinary parade of generals who have stepped forward to defend Mr. Rumsfeld includes a bevy of retired officers, including Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. Tommy R. Franks of the Army, who commanded American troops in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

On Tuesday, Mr. Rumsfeld summoned another group of retired officers for a closed meeting, ostensibly to brief them on Iraq, but clearly also to enlist their support when they appear on television.

Perhaps the most notable examples of damage control since the retired generals' complaints gathered force have come from Mr. Rumsfeld, who has appeared on Al Arabiya television, the Rush Limbaugh radio program and, twice, before television cameras at the Pentagon.

The appearances have been layered with the verbal flair, acerbic wit and defiant touches that Mr. Rumsfeld has made his trademark. But on Tuesday, there was also an uncharacteristic flash of humility — an olive twig, if not a branch — from a man better known for his combativeness.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has said he offered to resign two times after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, said he was "not inclined to be instantaneously judgmental" about what his critics were now saying, a message that has included complaints that his headstrong style causes him to disregard much of what anyone in a uniform tells him.

"Because of the importance of these matters being discussed, I'd like to reflect on them a bit," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Within minutes, though, he said the views of the six generals who had called for his resignation were hardly representative, noting that the nation's 6,000 or 7,000 retired generals and admirals were not "unanimous on anything."

At Mr. Rumsfeld's side, General Pace added that soldiers in Iraq showed no discernible dissatisfaction with Mr. Rumsfeld. General Pace said Gen. Michael W. Hagee, Marine Corps commandant, had just been there and reported that he "got exactly zero questions about the leadership in the department."

The calls for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation have abated since last week, when Mr. Bush asserted his authority as commander in chief to declare that Mr. Rumsfeld "has my full support and deepest appreciation."

The group that has called for the resignation includes two retired major generals who commanded troops in Iraq and a retired three-star general who was director of operations on the Joint Staff. Their comments have been criticized by other retired generals, who have said the group risks politicizing the armed forces.

A danger for Mr. Rumsfeld is that Republicans running in the November election will decide that his continued presence in the cabinet could drag down their prospects and urge Mr. Bush to dump him.

A Senate Republican aide said that despite expressions of support for Mr. Rumsfeld by some Republican senators, many other members expressed deep concern privately.

"The nervousness here is with a figure as controversial as Rumsfeld at the head of a war that's declining in popularity, that becomes a real political problem for members who are up for re-election this fall," said the aide, who insisted on anonymity because he had been told not to discuss senators' private conversations.

With Congress in recess, the aide said, he knew of no organized effort among Senate Republicans to make their concerns public or to take them to the White House. But the aide said he expected discussions to intensify when senators returned next week.

There are signs that the efforts to keep Republicans from defecting are working. On Tuesday, Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a news release taking on Mr. Rumsfeld's critics point by point. The statement notes that the secretary had 273 meetings with senior commanders last year, illustrating "that Secretary Rumsfeld respects and relies on the judgment of the Pentagon's uniformed leadership."

After taking questions for a half-hour, Mr. Rumsfeld went to meet the retired military officers and civilian analysts. Many of those invited comment regularly on CNN, Fox News and other television and radio outlets and are part of the same community that is proving a problem for the secretary.

In past meetings with the group, Mr. Rumsfeld has opened with lengthy statements. This time he said he would go straight to questions, participants said. He was asked about the criticism, said Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson, who retired from the Marines and who attended the meeting.

"He said it's a diversion, and that it's taken him away from the full-time focus on things he needs to do," he said. Mr. Rumsfeld "was not chastened. If anything, he looked like he was energized by it."

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

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Roots of the Uprising

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006; A19

Making Donald Rumsfeld the scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in Iraq is a way for other members of the administration to dodge responsibility for a misguided policy.

It makes perfect sense for a group of rebellious retired generals to demand that Rumsfeld go. The defense secretary's mistreatment of Gen. Eric Shinseki, who bravely told the truth to Congress before the invasion about how many more troops it would take to succeed in Iraq, was symptomatic of the contempt of this administration toward anyone who dared question its approach.

Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who served as a division commander in Iraq and a military aide to former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, had it exactly right last week when he explained why former soldiers were speaking up against their civilian bosses. "Civilian control is absolutely paramount," Batiste said, "but in order for it to work, there is a two-way street of respect and dialogue that has to exist." Respect and dialogue have been alien concepts to this bring-'em-on administration.

But that's also the point: For all his mistakes, Rumsfeld is not some alien creature operating as a loner sabotaging the otherwise reasonable policies of his bosses. President Bush is the commander in chief. Vice President Cheney is on record as having made outlandishly optimistic predictions before the war started about how swimmingly everything would go.

Rumsfeld is Bush's guy, which is why the president resists firing him. Letting Rumsfeld go would amount to acknowledging how badly the administration has botched Iraq.

Indeed, the rebellious generals have not confined their criticism to the secretary of defense. In his powerful article last week in Time magazine, Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold was far-reaching in saying that "the zealots' rationale for war made no sense." That was zealots , plural. He also said that our forces were committed to this fight "with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results." Does anyone doubt to whom those words "casualness" and "swagger" refer?

Newbold, formerly the Pentagon's top operations officer, declared that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's "recent statement that 'we' made the 'right strategic decisions' but made thousands of 'tactical errors' is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting." In other words, if Rumsfeld goes, should Rice go too?

It's amusing to hear the administration's supporters worry that these courageous former generals are a threat to civilian control of the military. The claim reflects this administration's willingness to muster any argument it can put its hands on to silence opposition.

It's also hypocritical. Recall the opposition to President Bill Clinton's proposal to allow gays to serve in the armed forces. A certain head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff named Colin Powell publicly broke with his commander in chief in 1993 in arguing that allowing gay men and lesbians to join would undermine "good order and discipline."

Far from speaking up on behalf of Clinton's rights as the military's civilian leader, Republicans in Congress lined up with Powell and the brass. Rep. Tom DeLay said that allowing gays to serve "undermines the effectiveness of the military." (He also said it "creates health problems.") Newt Gingrich condemned Clinton for engaging in "social engineering." Sen. John McCain challenged Clinton on the basis of the new commander in chief's biography. "This president has not one day of military experience," McCain said, "so, clearly, he does not have the expertise on this issue."

The dust-up over gays in the military reflected an unfortunate fact of American political life: For decades, the top leaders of the American military have been overwhelmingly conservative and Republican in their political sympathies. I say "unfortunate" not because the brass's political views have often differed from my own but because it does not serve our military or our public life well to have the leadership of the armed forces so skewed in a single political direction. Nor does it serve liberals well to be -- or to be seen as -- reflexively hostile to the military.

And that may be the silver lining in the current cloud over Rumsfeld and our Iraq policy. Some smart and patriotic generals are telling us that a policy is not wise or respectful of our troops just because it is put forward by politicians on the right end of our political spectrum. We may be witnessing the weakening of partisanship in the top echelons of the military. That would be very good for our republic.

[email protected]

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Nbadan]

Russert: A Source “Close to the President” Told Me Bush “Won’t Fire Rumsfeld Because It Would Be The Equivalent Of Firing Himself.”

Tim Russert revealed two very interesting pieces of information this morning on Don Imus regarding the future of Donald Rumsfeld and his standing in the Pentagon:


1. After Rep. Jack Murtha appeared on Meet the Press and advocated troop withdrawal several officials in the Pentagon called Russert to tell him “Murtha is right.”

2. A source “close to the President” told Russert that Bush “won’t fire Rumsfeld because it would be the equivalent of firing himself.”

Think Progress (http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/19/russert-rumsfeld)

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April 21, 2006
News Analysis

Criticizing an Agent of Change as Failing to Adapt

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

In defending himself against his critics, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has described himself as an agent of change and suggested that the complaints come from old thinkers who oppose reforming the military.

"Change is difficult," Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday. "It also happens to be urgently necessary."

It is true that since the day he arrived at the Pentagon, the defense secretary has been a man on a mission. Convinced that the generals were locked in a cold-war mindset — "legacy thinking," he dubbed it — Mr. Rumsfeld promoted the virtues of relying on precision weapons and fast-paced operations instead of huge numbers of troops.

Instead of endorsing Clinton-style nation building, Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States should rely more on the locals to shoulder the burden after "regime change."

But as a half-dozen retired Army and Marine generals have called for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation, some criticize him in his own terms. The change-agent defense secretary, they say, is resistant to change.

Mr. Rumsfeld, the critics assert, was slow to acknowledge a growing insurgency in Iraq and to counter it. The military is overstretched by the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but Mr. Rumsfeld has also resisted expanding the Army and Marines.

Paul D. Eaton, a retired two-star Army general who used to command the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga., and later helped train the new Iraqi military, said in an interview, "I was stunned," when a Pentagon review did not call for enlarging the Army and Marines. General Eaton, who called for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation in March, said, "They failed to account for the contemporary operating environment."

While the conduct of the war has provoked the critics, tensions between officers and their civilian boss began long before Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld's pursuit of his "transformation" agenda stirred some of it.

So did the manner in which he executed it, viewed by many officers as overbearing. Calling himself "genetically impatient," Mr. Rumsfeld gave a talk the day before the Sept. 11 attacks in which he said the Pentagon bureaucracy was a threat to national security.

Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel who has long argued that Army leaders were unimaginative and too cautious, recalls a Rumsfeld aide's jesting that the defense secretary thought the Army's problems could be solved by lining up 50 generals and gunning them down.

Certainly, there are experts who have argued that the Pentagon has long been in need of change. Mr. Rumsfeld's agenda to reshape the military, in fact, has long been shared by President Bush.

In a 1999 speech, Mr. Bush pledged to develop light, mobile and lethal units that could be quickly deployed. He vowed to appoint a secretary of defense who would change the military structure. Once in office, Mr. Bush decided that the strong-willed Mr. Rumsfeld was the man.

The new secretary wasted no time promoting his program. He was enamored of missile defense and precision weapons. He was skeptical about the Army leadership, which he considered old-fashioned, wedded to heavy forces and slow to change. The Army was pursing its own version of transformation, but it fell short of what Mr. Rumsfeld had in mind.

Tension Developed

Some longstanding critics of the Army leadership felt they finally had an ally at the top with Mr. Rumsfeld in charge. But soon there was friction between the new defense secretary and the generals he viewed as Clinton holdovers. As the United States began to plan its Afghan operation, Gen. Hugh Shelton, an Army general who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Mr. Rumsfeld first took up his post at the Pentagon, became concerned that Mr. Rumsfeld's transformation agenda would get a field test before the military was ready.

Days before he retired, General Shelton ran into Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey, the two-star head of the Joint Special Operations Command, in the White House parking lot. The Afghan war plan depended heavily on Special Operations forces, and General Shelton warned that the military had to resist the defense secretary's push to pare forces. Lives and the success of the mission hung in the balance, he argued.

Mr. Rumsfeld would later argue that the Afghan operation had been a major success as the United States toppled the Taliban and eliminated Al Qaeda's camps by relying on Special Operations forces, Afghan allies, air strikes — and by avoiding the commitment of substantial ground forces. Critics, though, argued that the absence of adequate American soldiers had made it easier for Osama bin Laden to escape.

By the time the Iraq war approached, Richard B. Myers, an Air Force general, had been installed as the new Joint Chiefs chairman. Mr. Rumsfeld's supporters considered General Myers and his eventual successor, Gen. Peter Pace of the Marine Corps, to be helpful in overcoming deeply entrenched institutional resistance to transformation.

Dissent Discouraged

Critics say Mr. Rumsfeld discouraged dissent by elevating those who supported his program. "He tended to surround himself with those that support his agenda," said Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of First Infantry Division and one of the retired generals who has criticized Mr. Rumsfeld. "He was involved with the selection of flag officers to an unprecedented level."

With his team in place, Mr. Rumsfeld summoned the senior military leadership to his Pentagon office in late 2001 to review the military's contingency plan for war with Iraq.

As Greg Newbold, the retired three-star general who served as chief operations deputy for the Joint Chiefs, outlined the plan, which called for as many as 500,000 troops, it was clear that Mr. Rumsfeld was increasingly irritated. He said he did not see why more than 125,000 troops would be required.

"My regret is that at the time I did not say, 'Mr. Secretary, if you try to put a number on a mission like this you may cause enormous mistakes,' " General Newbold recalled in an interview. "Give the military the task, give the military what you would like to see them do, and then let them come up with it. I was the junior military guy in the room, but I regret not saying it."

Former aides to Mr. Rumsfeld said he never told Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command, how many troops to deploy. But Mr. Rumsfeld repeatedly asked why the force could not be smaller and deployed more quickly. He also planted ideas and sent papers — a process his aides called "suasion" — in line with his agenda. General Franks initially proposed a force of up to 385,000 troops. That number shrank as the war plan morphed from a version called the Generated Start, to the Running Start, to the Hybrid, to Cobra II. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was an adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld, described the discussions between General Franks and the defense secretary as one of "constant negotiation."

In a departure from typical practice, President Bush gave Mr. Rumsfeld and not the secretary of state responsibility for post-war Iraq. A month before the invasion, Mr. Rumsfeld outlined his philosophy in a speech called "Beyond Nation Building." By avoiding a large troop presence and major reconstruction, the United States would guard against the creation of a culture of dependence on the part of the Iraqis.

Eleven days after that speech, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, appeared before Congress and was asked how many troops might be required to secure post-war Iraq. His response was several hundred thousand. On Mr. Rumsfeld's instruction, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz complained about the remark to Thomas E. White, the Army secretary, the next morning. General Shinseki, Mr. Wolfowitz said, had spoken out of turn and was off base. (Mr. White dug in his heels in support of the general and was fired by Mr. Rumsfeld soon after Baghdad fell.)

Rumsfeld's Plan Different

For all of the controversy, General Shinseki's numbers were similar to those generated by the Central Command. General Franks had projected that the attack would begin with just a portion of the invasion force, which would grow to 250,000 troops by the time Saddam Hussein's force was defeated and the United States began to stabilize Iraq. There was, however, a subtle but significant difference. Secretary Rumsfeld hoped to off-ramp — that is, cancel the deployment — of some units if the Iraqi military's resistance crumbled, and he wanted to reduce the occupying force as quickly as possible.

As the war unfolded, there were enough troops to defeat the Republican Guard and take the Iraqi capital. But as American forces advanced on Baghdad, Secretary Rumsfeld pressed the question of off-ramping the First Cavalry Division, which was the final division in the war plan. General Franks went along. Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the chief allied land war commander, was unhappy about the move, but did not protest.

The United States soon found there were not enough soldiers to control the borders, establish order in the capital or deprive the enemy of sanctuaries.

The decision of L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the occupation authority, to disband the Iraq army only added to the deficit of forces. That decision was approved by Mr. Rumsfeld. Neither Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, nor the Joint Chiefs were consulted about the decision.

For months, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Myers refrained from describing the resistance in Iraq as an insurgency. Finally, on July 16, 2003, Gen. John P. Abizaid, who succeeded General Franks at the Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference that the United States was dealing with a "classical guerrilla-type campaign."

Some former generals say that General Franks and other military leaders bear responsibility for many of the miscalculations in Iraq. Gen. Jack Keane, the former acting Army chief of staff, said that the Bush administration's aversion to nation building was wrong for Iraq. But he faults the generals, including himself, for failing to develop a comprehensive plan for a potential insurgency.

"The fact is that the Ba'athist insurgency surprised us and we had not developed a comprehensive option for dealing with this possibility," he said. "This was not just an intelligence community failure, but also our failure as senior military leaders."

In an Op-Ed article last month in The New York Times, General Eaton wrote that another factor contributed to the problems: "I have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership."

Michael R. Gordon is the chief military correspondent for The New York Times. Reporting for this article is drawn from the book "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," which was published by Pantheon Books. He is the co-author with Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine lieutenant general and former military correspondent for the newspaper.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ChumpDumper]

Rummy sent in just enough troops to "loose."

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April 23, 2006

Young Officers Join the Debate Over Rumsfeld

By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, April 22 — The revolt by retired generals who publicly criticized Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has opened an extraordinary debate among younger officers, in military academies, in the armed services' staff colleges and even in command posts and mess halls in Iraq.

Junior and midlevel officers are discussing whether the war plans for Iraq reflected unvarnished military advice, whether the retired generals should have spoken out, whether active-duty generals will feel free to state their views in private sessions with the civilian leaders and, most divisive of all, whether Mr. Rumsfeld should resign.

In recent weeks, military correspondents of The Times discussed these issues with dozens of younger officers and cadets in classrooms and with combat units in the field, as well as in informal conversations at the Pentagon and in e-mail exchanges and telephone calls.

To protect their careers, the officers were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about the debates they have had and have heard. The stances that emerged are anything but uniform, although all seem colored by deep concern over the quality of civil-military relations, and the way ahead in Iraq.

The discussions often flare with anger, particularly among many midlevel officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and face the prospect of additional tours of duty.

"This is about the moral bankruptcy of general officers who lived through the Vietnam era yet refused to advise our civilian leadership properly," said one Army major in the Special Forces who has served two combat tours. "I can only hope that my generation does better someday."

An Army major who is an intelligence specialist said: "The history I will take away from this is that the current crop of generals failed to stand up and say, 'We cannot do this mission.' They confused the cultural can-do attitude with their responsibilities as leaders to delay the start of the war until we had an adequate force. I think the backlash against the general officers will be seen in the resignation of officers" who might otherwise have stayed in uniform for more years.

One Army colonel enrolled in a Defense Department university said an informal poll among his classmates indicated that about 25 percent believed that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign, and 75 percent believed that he should remain. But of the second group, two-thirds thought he should acknowledge errors that were made and "show that he is not the intolerant and inflexible person some paint him to be," the colonel said.

Many officers who blame Mr. Rumsfeld are not faulting President Bush — in contrast to the situation in the 1960's, when both President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara drew criticism over Vietnam from the officer corps. (Mr. McNamara, like Mr. Rumsfeld, was also resented from the outset for his attempts to reshape the military itself.)

But some are furiously criticizing both, along with the military leadership, like the Army major in the Special Forces. "I believe that a large number of officers hate Rumsfeld as much as I do, and would like to see him go," he said, summarizing conversations with other officers.

"The Army, however, went gently into that good night of Iraq without saying a word," he added. "For that reason, most of us know that we have to share the burden of responsibility for this tragedy. And at the end of the day, it wasn't Rumsfeld who sent us to war, it was the president. Officers know better than anyone else that the buck stops at the top. I think we are too deep into this for Rumsfeld's resignation to mean much.

"But this is all academic. Most officers would acknowledge that we cannot leave Iraq, regardless of their thoughts on the invasion. We destroyed the internal security of that state, so now we have to restore it. Otherwise, we will just return later, when it is even more terrible."

The debates are fueled by the desire to mete out blame for the situation in Iraq, a drawn-out war that has taken many military lives and has no clear end in sight. A midgrade officer who has served two tours in Iraq said a number of his cohorts were angered last month when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that "tactical errors, a thousand of them, I am sure," had been made in Iraq.

"We have not lost a single tactical engagement on the ground in Iraq," the officer said, noting that the definition of tactical missions is specific movements against an enemy target. "The mistakes have all been at the strategic and political levels."

Many officers said a crisis of leadership extended to serious questions about top generals' commitment to sustain a seasoned officer corps that was being deployed on repeated tours to the long-term counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the rest of the government did not appear to be on the same wartime footing.

"We are forced to develop innovative ways to convince, coerce and cajole officers to stay in to support a war effort of national-level importance that is being done without a defensewide, governmentwide or nationwide commitment of resources," said one Army officer with experience in Iraq.

Another Army major who served in Iraq said a fresh round of debates about the future of the American military had also broken out. Simply put, the question is whether the focus should be, as Mr. Rumsfeld believes, on a lean high-tech force with an eye toward to possible opponents like China, or on ground-intensive counterinsurgency missions more suited to hunting terrorists, with spies and boots on the ground.

In general, the Army and Marines support maintaining beefy ground forces, while the Navy and Air Force — the beneficiaries of much of the high-tech arsenal — favor the leaner approach. And some worry that those arguments have become too fierce.

"I think what has the potential for scarring relations is the two visions of warfare — one that envisions near-perfect situational awareness and technology dominance, and the other that sees future war as grubby, dirty and chaotic," the major said. "These visions require vastly different forces. The tension comes when we only have the money to build one of these forces, who gets the cash?"

Some senior officers said part of their own discussions were about fears for the immediate future, centering on the fact that Mr. Rumsfeld has surrounded himself with senior officers who share his views and are personally invested in his policies.

"If civilian officials feel as if they could be faced with a revolt of sorts, they will select officers who are like-minded," said another Army officer who has served in Iraq. "They will, as a result, get the military advice they want based on whom they appoint."

Kori Schake, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who teaches Army cadets at West Point, said some of the debates revolved around the issues raised in "Dereliction of Duty," a book that analyzes why the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed unable or unwilling to challenge civilian decisions during the war in Vietnam. Published in 1997, the book was written by Col. H. R. McMaster, who recently returned from a year in Iraq as commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment.

"It's a fundamentally healthy debate," Ms. Schake said. "Junior officers look around at the senior leadership and say, 'Are these people I admire, that I want to be like?' "

These younger officers "are debating the standard of leadership," she said. "Is it good enough to do only what civilian masters tell you to do? Or do you have a responsibility to shape that policy, and what actions should you undertake if you believe they are making mistakes?"

The conflicts some officers express reflect the culture of commander and subordinate that sometimes baffles the civilian world. No class craves strong leadership more than the military.

"I feel conflicted by this debate, and I think a lot of my colleagues are also conflicted," said an Army colonel completing a year of work at one of the military's advanced schools. He expressed discomfort at the recent public airing of criticism by retired generals of Mr. Rumsfeld and the Iraq war planning.

But he said his classmates were also pointedly aware of how the Rumsfeld Pentagon quashed dissenting views that many argued were proved correct, and prescient.

In particular, he and others cited the denunciations of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who was shunted aside after telling Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure and stabilize Iraq after the Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Others contend that the military's own failings are equally at fault. A field-grade officer now serving in Iraq said he thought it was incorrect for the retired generals to call for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation. His position, he said, is that "if there is a judgment to be cast, it rests as much upon the shoulders of our senior military leaders."

That officer, like several others interviewed, emphasized that while these issues often occupied officers' minds, the debate had not hobbled the military's ability to function in Iraq. "No impact here that I can see regarding this subject," he said.

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"you're doing a heckuva job, shrubbie/dickie/condi/rummy/karlie"

All of you should have known from VN NEVER to start a war of choice that wouldn't be supported majoritarily by the civilians and the military to the end, bitter or sweet.

What fucking REPUG mess. May they all burn in hell

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