Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, are you for or against him and why?
Thoughts or opinions on this critical cabinet position???
Anti Rumsfeld argument from the right:
The Defense Secretary We Have
By William Kristol
Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page A33
“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
– Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a town hall meeting with soldiers
at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, Dec. 8.
Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It’s performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn’t want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.
Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard:
“Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip.”
So the Army is in charge. “They” are working at it. Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: “I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. . . . And that is what the Army has been working on.” Not “that is what we have been working on.” Rather, “that is what the Army has been working on.” The buck stops with the Army.
At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn’t boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armor, “It’s interesting.” In fact, “if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.” Good point. Why have armor at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago? It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.
Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week, when asked about troop levels? “The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that’s really out of my control.” Really? Well, “the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted.”
Leave aside the fact that the issue is not “the number of troops we had for the invasion” but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task – and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available. Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003. And leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld’s refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11.
In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: “I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that’s fine.” Except he fails to take responsibility.
All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?
In Sunday’s New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:
“Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?” Col. Smith’s answer: “They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or color or creed. . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues.”
These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.
The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.
Anti Rumsfeld criticism from Republicans:
GOP lawmaker Collins joins Rumsfeld critics
Senator’s letter cites armored vehicle situation in Iraq
From Joe Johns and Steve Turnham
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, December 16, 2004 Posted: 3:43 PM EST (2043 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) – U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has joined other Republicans in criticizing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Collins, R-Maine, fired off a tough letter Wednesday to Rumsfeld, describing his remarks about the lack of “up-armored” Humvees in war zones as “troubling.”
“I am very concerned that it appears the Pentagon failed to do everything in its power to increase production” of the vehicles, Collins wrote.
“The Department of Defense still has been unable to ensure that our troops have the equipment they need to perform their mission as safely as possible.”
Collins also complained that the Army requested production of an additional 100 Humvees a month only after a soldier complained about the lack of necessary armor on trucks during a December 9 town hall meeting with Rumsfeld in Kuwait.
“Thus far, the Pentagon has received only 5,910 of the 8,105 of factory-armored Humvees commanders say they need,” Collins wrote. “Why was this request not placed earlier to increase fully armored Humvee production from 450 to 550 a month at a time when many of us brought to the Pentagon’s attention the shortages relayed to us by our constituent-troops and their families?”
Rumsfeld responded to a question about soldiers using scrap metal to improve protection on trucks, saying “you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.”
U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, said troops in Iraq “deserved a far better answer than that flippant response.”
“That might work in a newsroom where you can be cute with a television audience,” he told CNN this week, “but not in a room where you’re putting men and women in harm’s way. I wonder what the parents thought.”
Rumsfeld told the troops that shortages of armor did not stem from a lack of money but were “a matter of physics.” The manufacturers of add-on armor are producing it as fast as humanly possible, he said.
Two companies producing armor plating disputed that assertion and said they could produce as many as double the number of armor kits in a month.
In May, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fielded a similar question about armor on military vehicles from a soldier in Baghdad – an event that Rumsfeld also attended.
“It’s not a matter of resources; it’s a matter of how fast can we build these things and get them over here,” Myers said, according to a Defense Department transcript.
On Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson told reporters that the Army will spend $4 billion on buying uparmored trucks and add-on kits in the next six to eight months.
Reports: McCain, Lott also critical
Another influential Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has been sharply critical of Rumsfeld.
McCain said he has “no confidence” in the defense secretary and told The Associated Press, “There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld” on the issue of troop strength in Iraq. (Full story)
The Pentagon said this month that it was dispatching an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq and extending the stays of more than 10,000 others to bolster security ahead of the January elections. The moves will bring the number of American forces in Iraq from nearly 140,000 to an all-time high of about 150,000, the Pentagon said.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, joined the Republicans who – while not asking for Rumsfeld’s resignation – want a change.
“I’m not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld,” Lott told the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, according to the AP. “I don’t think he listens enough to his uniformed officers.”
The AP quoted him as saying, “I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so. I’m not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point.”
Calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation have come from some outspoken Democrats – notably Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey.
“No one has been held accountable” for any of things that have gone wrong in the Iraq war – “the miscalculation and interpretation of the intelligence before the war,” a “failure to secure all the weapons dumps” and “a problem with our administration of the prisons,” Corzine said this week.
Biden said that “it was time for him to step down a year and a half ago” and said that if indeed the nation went to war “with the Army we had and it was ill-equipped, then we should have waited.” (“Late Edition” transcript)
Biden added that Rumsfeld left “an incredibly mechanized Army” at home.
“We did not go with the Army we had,” he said.
However, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has defended Rumsfeld, saying the secretary’s leadership “has been firm when we needed to be firm.”
“We misunderstood the nature of what we thought would happen after Baghdad,” Graham said Sunday.
A spokesman for the Senate Armed Service Committee, John Ullyot, released a statement this week indicating that the armor issue will play a major part of an oversight hearing on the Iraq mission early in the new Congress, which meets January 4.
“Since the first day the Defense Department identified a shortage of vehicle armor, Congress not only has provided the full armor funding requested by the department, it has gone beyond that, by providing $1.3 billion more for additional armor and armored vehicles in 2003-2004,” the statement said.
Defense of Rumsfeld from the right:
http://www.nationalreview.com/editorial/editors200412161101.asp
December 16, 2004, 11:01 a.m.
Operation ?Gotcha!?
The McCain-Hagel Caucus is helping only its members.
The McCain-Hagel Caucus has spoken. It has no confidence in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Senator John McCain has said so explicitly, while Senator Chuck Hagel has only strongly hinted at it. Both senators have 2008 aspirations, and Republican-primary voters would do well to take early note of how they behave during a budding media frenzy directed at one of the Bush administration?s key players.
The get-Rumsfeld crowd ? mostly Democrats, joined by the McCain-Hagel caucus and a few stray hawks ? takes great umbrage at Rumsfeld’s answer to a National Guardsman’s question about an insufficient number of up-armored Humvees. Hagel intoned, ?those men and women deserved a far better answer from their secretary of Defense than a flippant comment.? But Rumsfeld wasn’t being flip. One wonders whether Hagel has even taken the time to read the full transcript of the secretary’s remarks. The troops gave Rumsfeld a standing ovation at the end. Is it the position of the secretary?s critics that the troops were too stupid to realize they had just been belittled?
The comment that has most angered Rumsfeld’s detractors is his statement that you go to war with the Army you have. That may have been too frank in such a forum, but it was true. We went into Iraq with a military not yet fully transformed to adjust to 21st-century reality, which turned out to include an insurgency launched in a harsh urban environment. If Rumsfeld’s hawkish critics, some of whom were banging the drums for the Iraq war for years, thought that war could be responsibly fought only with an Army equipped with 8,000 up-armored Humvees, they had adequate time to make that known ? or at least lessen their enthusiasm for the enterprise accordingly. Of course, they didn’t.
Once it became clear exactly what we were facing in Iraq, the Pentagon adjusted. Such adjustments are an inevitable part of any complex and difficult military enterprise. At roughly 140,000, there are many more troops there now than were initially planned. The training of Iraqi forces has undergone changes in both its nature and volume since the end of the war, as we have realized both the importance of the training and our initial failures in its implementation. Over a year ago Pentagon task forces were set up to figure out how best to counter roadside bombs and how to rush equipment ? from up-armored Humvees to night-vision goggles ? to the troops in the field. In both areas our performance has steadily improved.
Behind much of the criticism of Rumsfeld is the idea that he has disastrously skimped on troop levels, especially when it comes to the occupation. But insurgencies aren’t crushed by sheer numbers. Would that it were so. Counter-insurgency depends on intelligence and a sound political strategy, which in this case involves integrating Iraqi forces into the fight and moving ahead with the elections. Given that more troops would require an even larger logistical tail (read: more Humvees and ?soft? vehicles carrying supplies, i.e. more targets) to support them, it makes sense that commanders on the ground aren?t asking for significantly more troops.
The agenda of most of Rumsfeld’s critics is clear: to wound the administration and discredit the war effort by taking the scalp of one of its architects. Some of those coming at Rumsfeld from the right have a more subtle concern. They can’t bear to admit that Iraq has been more difficult than they ever dared imagine, because of the irreducible reality of political and social conditions on the ground. Remaking societies by military means can be harder, bloodier work than some neoconservatives care to acknowledge. That doesn’t mean it?s not worth it, or that our project still won’t succeed in Iraq. We suspect that the January elections will produce a strong a civic statement of the sort we saw in Afghanistan, and thus help shift the political dynamic against the forces of violence.
There is, nonetheless, no easy way to get from here to there. We have made our own criticisms of Rumsfeld and the Pentagon; we wish the Humvee situation had been addressed even more aggressively sooner; and we think Rumsfeld bears some responsibility for the distrust that an element of the brass has for Pentagon civilians. But make no mistake: Anyone else could have been secretary of Defense the last three years and Iraq likely would have been every bit the heartbreakingly trying venture it has proved to be. Gotcha games might divert attention from that fact, but they can never change it. Let’s get on with the prevailing.
Analysis of Rumsfeld from a rightward perspective:
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/total-war-interesting-article-from.html
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Total War
An interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor highlights some of the challenges of putting ‘more boots on the ground’ in Iraq. It turns to be a little more complicated than ordering more men into the theater. It means creating more units in the first place and structuring them differently.
[Begin CSM excerpt]
The armored force that led the thrust into Baghdad in 2003 will in January become the first division to return to Iraq for a second, year-long tour. ... For decades, the Army has sized, arrayed, and trained its forces to sprint to victory in a conventional war against opposing states. Thursday, for the first time since Vietnam, it faces a marathon of protracted deployments against dogged insurgents - with no end in sight. Many of the strains are already showing as the 3rd Infantry trains in the Louisiana backcountry for another Iraq tour, grappling with an abrupt reorganization, an influx of new troops and equipment, and veterans with combat stress.
Army leaders admit that at current levels they must rotate troops into war zones at a rate that is unsustainable in the long run. Warning of a force not yet "broken" but "bent," they are rushing to add 30,000 soldiers to the 482,000-strong active-duty force and increase the number of active brigades - from 33 when the Iraq war began to 43 by 2006, with another five possible by 2007. Only then might the Army hope to shorten tours to about six months every two years, which soldiers say is more bearable for them and their families. [End CSM excerpt]
This apparently simple task conceals a multitude of difficulties, including changing the arrangements between reserve and active components; breaking up the old divisional structure into a larger number of brigades; creating the appropriate tables of equipment and tactics for the newly resized units; altering the role of support troops to reflect a “war without fronts”. To it must be added the tasks of disseminating combat lessons learned, delivering training in new robotic and networked weapons systems. These are certainly in addition to addressing the more publicized shortfalls in body armor and hardened vehicles.
[Begin CSM excerpt]
From the window of his C-12 jet, Maj. Gen. William Webster traces the contours of the Red River as it winds through the woods of his native Louisiana. ... On this November morning, General Webster is heading back to Polk as commander of the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) to appraise the Army's newest brigade. Cobbled together in just eight months, with scores of recruits arriving to fill out its ranks this summer, the 4th Brigade is undergoing final training before shipping out to Iraq early next month.
"In the midst of a war, we knew we had to change in eight to 10 months versus eight to 10 years," he says, drinking black coffee from a Thermos. "The chief [Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker] said, 'I think we can create 15 new brigades. You guys figure out how to do it.' We just had to run through this thing on the fly." [End CSM excerpt]
As Secretary Rumsfeld was on his way to Kuwait, during which he would be asked the famous question about “hillbilly armor”, an interviewer asked him what he regarded as the task ahead. Whereas General Webster was concerned with solving operational problems, Rumsfeld was facing the same difficulties that Webster had been grappling with, but at a higher level of abstraction.
[Begin CSM excerpt]
Well, the election?s over and the President asked me if I would be willing to stay on and I told him I would be delighted to do that. We?ve got a lot of work that?s well along, but some of it?s not finished. The task of moving an institution as large as the U.S. Department of Defense is a sizable task. And it?s the kind of thing that doesn?t happen instantaneously. [bold]Great bureaucracies don?t spin on a dime.[/bold]
The services are in the process of rebalancing the active component with the reserve component so that we get on to active duty the forces we need on a continuing basis and put into reserves some of those skill sets that we need less frequently. The effect will be to not have to put such demands on the Guard and Reserve. ... We are doing something that needed to be done for decades and that is to adjust our force posture in the world globally. We?ll be bringing home some troops, we?ll be bringing home some dependents, we?ll be shifting our weight in various parts of the globe. And the emphasis will be not on numbers of things, but on capabilities. And we?ll be looking less to how many troops or how many tanks or how many planes are located in a certain spot and we?ll be focused more on precision, equipment, speed, agility, as opposed to mass and sheer numbers. [bold]And that?s going to be a hard thing for people to understand.[/bold] [End CSM excerpt][Bold in original post]
The hardest thing to understand was that the old world – and the old military metrics had departed forever. During the First World War large horse cavalry masses were held in reserve for years in the expectation of a role which had already disappeared into history. Each transformational task that Rumsfeld faced had its analogue in the field. General Webster described his efforts to “reinvent the 3ID” against the “warstoppers”.
[Begin CSM excerpt] “It’s like guerrilla warfare,” he says, describing tactics he’s used to skirt the constraints of budgets and regulations to secure vital weaponry, personnel, and equipment. Several times in the past year, Webster has confronted obstacles so severe he called them “war stoppers.” “At one point, I didn’t have enough rifles to give to all the soldiers, or radios to give to the leaders, or armored vehicles. That’s a war stopper,” he says. “So by hook or by crook we got what we need.” That meant, for example, using artful accounting to spend $11 million on add-on armor for 885 Humvees. [End CSM excerpt]
In a very real sense the dominance of the US armed forces over the enemy is a function of its superiority of organization. War is combat between armies not duels between individuals. In still wider terms it is a confrontation between societies and the power they can bring to bear on the battlefield. When Clausewitz referred to war as ‘politics by other means’, he was speaking the literal truth. The scheduled January 30 elections in Iraq are just as much part of the war plan as the redeployment of the 3ID, a component in a larger plan that is beyond a SecDef to control. Whatever his defects and mistakes, Rumsfeld at least recognizes the need to transform the purely military aspect of American strength. The challenge, without which any military transformation will be negated, is to improve foreign policy and intelligence in the same way.
This is something I was complaining about before the election. Glad to see that it isn’t simply a liberal perspective to think this is an issue.
indeed, it was my understanding, having heard many complaints about this issue from soldiers, that the military had civilian leadership which. Rummy seems to be trying to distance himself from this reality. in fact, it was my understanding that this lack of first hand experience (and not the military itself) was often to blame for situations like the lack of armor. I’m sure that there are some pro-Rumsfeld attitudes from all points on the political compass. how do ya’ll feel about his “buck passing?” do you offer a defense? just curious.
I think Rummy is probably the strongest defense secretary since the position was created.
He is transitioning the military from a cold war heavily mechanized machine that needed to be deployed forward or mobilized over months to a lean and quick military. This new look will be deployed in days.
Does he make mistakes? Probably. Does he use good judgement. I think most of the time? After 9/11 he was excellent in dealing with the public. If you take his statement to the troops recently out of context it sounds cold. In context, however, it is a well thought out response.
I can’t judge Rummy anything more then superficially. Tommy Franks, in his autobiography “American Soldier” had high praise for him. High praise from Tommy Franks carries a lot of weight. Franks is a soldiers soldier. Started as an enlisted man and worked his way up thru the ranks.
If Rummy is left in place he will transform the military to meet today’s threats. The generals usually do not like to strong a secretary. He usurps their authority and balances the budget in a way the may not like. If he is removed I am not sure who would do a better job.
I can just chime in with what the Economist (by far not a left-wing magazine) has been asking for a long time now: Donald Rumsfeld is politically responsible for the questionable treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and should therefore resign.
This would actually help the Bush gouvernment in restoring its international profile, so even politically it would be a wise move.
That’s my view.
Makkun
I don’t know for certain but I find it hard to believe that the Sec. of Defense would know about the activities of guards at a military prison.
It’s like expecting him to know the actions of a platoon or a motor pool. It is way to far down the chain of command.
If anybody should be blamed. And the blame should be considered very minor, it should be the commanding general. She came accross as an idiot. A complete idiot to me. Not one media person pursued this. I think it because she is a female general and they were hesitant to do so because of the PC overtones.
not to make a defense in one way or another, but those who believe Rummy, et al should be held responsible for Abu Gharib abuses are arguing that Rummy and Ashcroft “created an atmosphere” through Gitmo, internal memos, etc. that allowed the abuses to occur. secondly, some argue that the abuses were then covered up by Rummy, however, no one believes that he got on his magick red phone, called Miss England, and had her abuse prisoners all the while laughing maniacally and rubbing himself (nice image, huh?).
personally, I think the prisoner abuse issue, while made worse by the Gitmo grey-area abuses (enemy combatants means nothing, they’re either soldiers, civilians, or combatants, all of which have certain, circumscribed rights under the Geneva Convention and, not to get off topic inside a parenthetical statement, yes, I believe that when you fight to defend a way of life, you don’t throw the way of life out the window in the process) the attitudes were in place before Gitmo. most importantly, the prisoner abuse scandal was a side effect of the modern micro-media age. everybody’s got a fucking video camera. everybody wants to record everything, whether its smart to do so or not. in short, I’m sure that abuses this bad have happened in the past, but no one was dumb enough to record them. or place BDSM sex calls to the SECDEF.
Hedo,
I agree that Rumsfeld did not know of the single incidents, but I agree with Battlelust that by creating a culture of accepting the existence of normal (with full rights) and second class prisoners (“enemy combatants”, or however you might want to call them) he has opened the door for the abuse. However you justify this legally - and I bet there is some way to do just that - it is morally wrong in my book. Hence, I do not say he is legally responsible, as the perpetrators and their commanders are, but he is politically responsible, and should have done the decent thing and resigned months ago.
Makkun
Well under the UCMJ the officer who created that environment would be responsible. However, if we started blaming everyone in the chain of command for each action a soldier takes…we would have the receptionist at the Pentagon as one of the joint chiefs in about two weeks.
The concept is just impractical. I don’t think we should degrade these prisoners either but it’s time to take a deep breath and step back. It wasn’t Rummy who allowed it. It was the officer in charge.
hedo,
I see your point. Off course it would be impractical just to work up the chain of command. And I agree that only the directly responsible who knew about it have to be legally punished.
I have 2 reasons why I think he is politically responsible:
First off all, I am not so sure if Rummy hasn’t allowed it in the eyes of the perpetrators - not off course directly, but by implication. Publicly defending the stance that basic rights and the freedom from harm (some of the treatments deemed as “acceptable” I would not want to face ever) can be taken away from certain people, is very problematic, as it creates exceptions from a general rule that all prisoners are to be treated in the same humane manner.
Secondly, the Secretary of Defense is a political position - (s)he is not part of the military chain of command in the sense that (s)he cannot be replaced under duress. This person is the civilian representative of the executive, heading the military - but responsible to the civilian public. This person should, no must be beyond doubt a moral and ethical example - especially when it comes to respecting inalienable human and civilian rights.
In my view by creating a two-class system of prisoner treatment and then defending this system when it caused cases of abuse makes Donald Rumsfeld not the right person for the job.
Makkun
all the bullcrap that is going on in Iraq right now, what else would you have expected. The four major architects of this war (Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz) haven’t fought in one war between them. what else would have expected when you have four individuals calling the shots whom have never had a bullet shot at them in their entire lives. All of them combined and their collective lack of combat service explains alot about what is going on. No way in hell that any real combat solider could ever make that horrible comment that rumsfeld made to that solider.
Between that comment and his “shock and awe” comment, rumsfeld has really showed how out of touch he is with humanity.
having personally seen one person die right in front of my own eyes as a result of a car accident, I find nothing “shocking and awe” about death whether it is dropping bombs and killing thousands or one single stranger dying in the street as a result of a head on collision. Rumsfeld maybe very book smart, but he needs to take his nose out of the books every now and then, and “get under the bar” if you will.
[quote]MikeShank wrote:
all the bullcrap that is going on in Iraq right now, what else would you have expected. The four major architects of this war (Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz) haven’t fought in one war between them. what else would have expected when you have four individuals calling the shots whom have never had a bullet shot at them in their entire lives. All of them combined and their collective lack of combat service explains alot about what is going on. No way in hell that any real combat solider could ever make that horrible comment that rumsfeld made to that solider.
Between that comment and his “shock and awe” comment, rumsfeld has really showed how out of touch he is with humanity.
having personally seen one person die right in front of my own eyes as a result of a car accident, I find nothing “shocking and awe” about death whether it is dropping bombs and killing thousands or one single stranger dying in the street as a result of a head on collision. Rumsfeld maybe very book smart, but he needs to take his nose out of the books every now and then, and “get under the bar” if you will.[/quote]
Well said!
Those on the right invested so much defending the decision to go in, that now if they admit that the post-invasion reconstruction has gone poorly they feel it will be a sign of weakness. That’s why you see these extreme, seemingly irrational reactions for otherwise rational people. They need to believe the reconstruction is going well, or else it might shed doubt on the fundmental belief they have that Iraq was right. (The same happens on the left; Iraq must be “LOST FOREVER!” or else perhaps they were wrong this whole time)
That’s why you see some of the smartest people on this board claiming EVERYTHING written in the news is a liberal controversy.
That’s why you get people subscribing to e-mail lists through which they get the “good news round-up” from Iraq every week.
That’s why you see a seemingly very bright person get a forwarded e-mail about how a soldier in Iraq gave a little Iraqi girl a toy and thus believe that everything is going fine because they got it from a source that’s “really on the ground.”
I think that confronting Iraq was the right decision, although I don’t see how a reasonable person can look at all of the evidence and conclude that the pre-invasion and post-invasion were both mis-managed to some extent. Rumsfeld and President Bush, as leaders, are DIRECTLY responsible for that mis-management and should be held accountable. I expect nothing less from our leaders and I expect nothign less fromm yself when in a position of leadership. Does that mean President Bush should be impeached? Absolutely not. Does that mean Rumsfeld should be replaced? Not cut and dry, but you could make a good case for that…
This article showed up on the news section of Yahoo. The following is an excerpt, so click through if you want the whole thing.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not personally sign his name on letters of condolence to families of troops killed in Iraq but instead had it done by a machine, an action lawmakers said on Sunday showed insensitivity and was inappropriate for leadership during war.
Rumsfeld acknowledged that he had not signed the letters to family members of more than 1,000 U.S. troops killed in action and in a statement said he would now sign them in his own hand. “This issue of the secretary of Defense not personally signing the letters is just astounding to me and it does reflect how out of touch they are and how dismissive they are,” Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“I have no confidence in Rumsfeld,” Hagel added.
M
I posted that letter as a balance to the prevailing mentality that “the sky is falling” in Iraq. Your argument has merit but I disagree.
Most of the country is under control. The Iraqi’s want it that way. That’s the common knowledge from any grunt you speak with.
fyi- Ever meet a Marine Corp. Gunnery Sgt. up close and personal. If not take a spin down to the training center in Ca. If after a brief conversation with said Gunny you think he is full of shit I will stand corrected. They are about as straight shooting as you can get when making a generalization.
[quote]hedo wrote:
M
I posted that letter as a balance to the prevailing mentality that “the sky is falling” in Iraq. Your argument has merit but I disagree.
Most of the country is under control. The Iraqi’s want it that way. That’s the common knowledge from any grunt you speak with.
fyi- Ever meet a Marine Corp. Gunnery Sgt. up close and personal. If not take a spin down to the training center in Ca. If after a brief conversation with said Gunny you think he is full of shit I will stand corrected. They are about as straight shooting as you can get when making a generalization.[/quote]
I’m not disputing that soldiers on the ground are honest. I’m saying that no one soldier on the ground has a complete grasp of everything Iraq. I’ve seen quotes from soldiers that believe this war is a disaster and elections will fail without doubt. Does that make it so because “grunts” are straight shooters? Of course not.
Given that, why only believe people on the ground in Iraq that say it is going well? There are plenty of people on the ground in Iraq that say it’s going poorly. Why are they dismissed? Could it be possible that some areas are going well and some are going disasterously poorly?
I don’t dispute that most of the geographical area of Iraq is under control, but even partisan sources describe major sections as being out of our control. Even Bush has admitted so, in the way that a politician admits mistakes.
Think about this: We recently launched a major offensive on insurgent-controlled Fallujah. We didn’t increase are security there based on concerns, or press them a little harder…we had to launch an offensive against INSURGENT CONTROLLED fallujah. How did a major parts of this country (parts we knew before-hand would be trouble) fall into complete control of insurgents? There are a list of mistakes that occured and have been admitted to, now who is going to be held responsible? These are major strategic failures, not minor tacticals ones “commonly made in every war.” Who is responsible?