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Rumsfeld sees and raises on Afghanistan by Moe Lane Monday, December 7th Walking through this one: Last week former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reacted strongly to the White House’s allegation that military commanders in Afghanistan were denied troop requests under the previous administration.  Actually, that’s too weak a statement: Rumsfeld denied that anything of the sort had happened under his watch.Which, in point of fact, it did not: the administration was referring to events in 2008 - under Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert Gates (who is also the current SecDef, by the way) - and said events can be more accurately...

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday lashed out at President Obama for claiming the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan. In a rare break in his public silence since leaving the Pentagon, Rumsfeld rejected the claim as a "bald misstatement" and "disservice" that cannot go unanswered. "Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response," Rumsfeld said in a written statement. "I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006." The president leveled the charge in...

Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement: “In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.” “I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly...

Responding to President Obama’s address on Afghanistan yesterday, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the following statement: “In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.” “I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly...

Osama bin Laden was within the grasp of US forces in late 2001 and could have been caught if then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld hadn't rejected calls for reinforcements, a hard-hitting US Senate report says. The report, set for release Monday, is intended to help learn the lessons of the past as President Barack Obama prepares to announce a major escalation of the conflict, now in its ninth year, with up to 35,000 more US troops. It points the finger directly at Rumsfeld for turning down requests for reinforcements as Bin Laden was trapped in caves and tunnels in a mountainous...

Because that's apparently where you go when you're forced out of the White House. The only difference being that Rumsfeld resigned in dignity, noting that he had obviously lost the confidence of the American people. Van Jones not so much: Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, resigned Saturday, following weeks of pressure from the right and a flurry of revelations about his past statements."I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today," Jones said in a statement dated Sept 5 released around midnight on Sept 6. "On...

WASHINGTON — A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee says more troops are needed in Afghanistan and is warning that the U.S. must not 'Rumsfeld' the war.

He's vigorous. He's direct. At nearly 70, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is TV's newest stud. Forget The Guardian's Simon Baker, Smallville's Tom Welling, or 24's Kiefer Sutherland. The sexiest man on television is a grandpop with a throaty laugh and a confidence so overpowering it's made entire countries go weak in the knees. No doubt about it, Donald Rumsfeld is a stud muffin. Oh sure, he's a bespectacled government bureaucrat pushing 70. But the secretary of defense has a quality that many women adore. He's as self-assured as a bull in a cow pasture. Next to this ex-Navy flyboy and ...

GENEVA — Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be in trouble soon for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday. "In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties," Leandro Despouy, who is special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.

Who is to blame for (1) our difficulties in Iraq, (2) the delayed Katrina response, (3) lousy relations between the US and Russia, and (4) Republicans losing the Senate?  Donald Rumsfeld, of course.  At least if you believe Robert Draper, as he writes in the June 2009 issue of GQ. "Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics -- his administration peers -- are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography. For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians...

It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left. They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists. Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech...

A report on the GQ magazine Web site is quoting unnamed former Bush administration official as blaming former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for many failures, including a delay in military assistance in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The report says "in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The Washington Monthly highlights more of Robert Draper's article in GQ: "[T]hree years later, when I asked a...

An aide to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Keith Urbahn, e-mails to contest a widely discussed GQ article by Robert Draper, which suggested that Rumsfeld "appreciated" the practice of quoting Biblical quotations on the cover sheets of classified briefings, and that Rumsfeld brought the briefings to President Bush. Urbahn e-mails that the briefings in question were not routinely sent to Rumsfeld, and that Rumsfeld considers the cover slides "harmful and counterproductive to the war effort." Urbahn's full e-mail: The slides in the “World Intelligence Update” were prepared on a daily basis by military personnel serving on the Joint Staff, which...

The fight over national security increasingly threatens to drag the United States into a political civil war that could also fracture Barack Obama's political base. It is turning the President's own Democratic allies into potential enemies, while undermining his domestic priorities in health care and energy reform. Yesterday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich pointed all eyes to the website of Gentleman's Quarterly, which has posted a series of cover sheets to ultra-top-secret intelligence updates that former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to prepare daily for former president George W. Bush. It turns out that the cover sheets routinely showed...

A series of cover sheets for intelligence reports written for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials during the early days of the war in Iraq in 2003 were adorned with biblical quotations, and appeared Sunday, six years later, on the Web site of GQ magazine. The daily briefings were called the “Worldwide Intelligence Update,” one of several intelligence reports compiled overnight and presented in a folder for Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials as they came to work. In the selection of the cover sheets that GQ placed on its Web site, photographs of soldiers praying...

Donald Rumsfeld covered Iraq briefing papers with Biblical texts According to a report in GQ magazine the religious texts were imposed over pictures of the US armed forces engaged in the war. Shown to only a small circle of senior advisers, the pages were first used on the eve of the 2003 invasion and were designed to provide support and encouragement to Mr Bush, a Christian who often cited the Bible while in office. Some Pentagon officials feared that if the documents were leaked at the height of the conflict, the use of Christian language to justify the invasion of...

Watching this clip I just couldn't help but wonder how on Earth Donald Rumsfeld manages to remain so composed. Apparently the Democratic Underground is behind this episode of harassment. Ahhh, maybe it's not harassment anyway. After all, they're just doing what Obama said... "getting in their face."

Rumsfeld Rejected Waterboarding Pelosi Did Not http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/29/top_stories/doc49f821cd5d0ae182977392.txt

White House wants panel to change opinion about lethality of some terrorists they want released. http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/28/top_stories/doc49f6bd41268ca954534464.txt

Retired military analysts are reacting with outrage that the Pulitzer committee awarded one of its prestigious prizes for a story discredited by an independent investigation, special correspondent Rowan Scarborough reports.

Sen. John McCain (?-Ariz.), joining with liberal Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), issued a report last week on the abuse of terrorist detainees. The report accuses former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Defense Department General Counsel Jim Haynes, and David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, of causing the torture of terrorist detainees. But the report is a clumsy calumny, contradicting the factual conclusions of earlier, far more credible investigations. Predictably, it was enough for the New York Times to call for the appointment of a prosecutor to consider criminal charges against Rumsfeld and the others....

The announcement that retired Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki will be President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of veterans affairs has energized one of the most enduring myths of the Bush presidency. Among the media coverage in recent days: Gen. Shinseki "clashed with the Bush administration on its Iraq war strategy" (Associated Press). In "questioning the Pentagon's Iraq war strategy" (The Post), Shinseki "warn[ed] that far more troops would be needed than the Pentagon had committed" (New York Times). For his candor, he was "vilified" (Boston Globe) by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Shinseki has a chance during his confirmation...

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to portions of a report released on Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The report's executive summary, made public by the committee's Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on Dec. 2, 2002.

Nineteen months after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the war in Iraq "lost" and just nine months after Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted the war has been a "failure" because it had not brought political change leading to reconciliation, it can now be said conclusively that both were wrong. One of the great military reversals in history is close to achieving victory. That is contributing to stability in Iraq, along with reconciliation between warring factions. These conclusions are contained in a report compiled by retired General Barry R. McCaffrey after a recent visit to Iraq during which he consulted with...

THE surge in Iraq has been one of the most impressive military accomplishments in recent years. It has been so successful that the emerging consensus is that what may now be needed in Afghanistan is a similar surge of American forces. President-elect Barack Obama campaigned on his intention to do so, as did his former opponent, John McCain. As one who is occasionally — and incorrectly — portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful. President Bush’s bold...

“I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq." ### Barack Obama has been appropriately strident in his condemnation of the mortgage-based financial corruption which nearly led to the collapse of the investment banking system in the United States. But there are some strong smelling financial skeletons in his own closet. Obama has his own personal housing crisis that is tied not into Fanny Mae, but into a...

A classified order authorising attacks on al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, even in countries not a war with the US, was approved by Mr Bush and signed by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the newspaper said, citing anonymous US officials.

As part of our special investigation "Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide," we asked a host of military thinkers to contribute their two cents on topics relating to global Pentagon strategy. (You can access the archive here.) The following dispatch comes from Katherine T. McCaffrey, an assistant professor of anthropology at Montclair State University in New Jersey and author of "Military Power and Popular Protest: The US Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico".

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2002 CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks. That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. At 9:53...

These days, political memoirs come in three genres. First, the "everyone around me was an idiot or a crook, but I was a really smart good guy." Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's What Happened perfected the genre, assuring him the place in history previously occupied by Baron Munchausen. The second borrows a line from the great Toby Keith, converting "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" from lyric to prose. Former CIA director George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm will, for many a year, be foremost in that category. The last is...

Presidential campaigns are so much about posturing that it's easy to miss what's really going on. Take national security policy. John McCain and Barack Obama want you to think they represent diametrically opposed approaches to national security, when in fact they have quite similar views. And one of the things they have in common is that neither of them wants you to realize they see future security challenges pretty much the same way Donald Rumsfeld did. To prove that point, let's take a little stroll down memory lane. Nine years ago this month, presidential candidate George W. Bush gave the...

Foot Soldiers and Generals PART ONE: The Foot Soldiers Well, you did it. A few weeks ago, we reported the incredible 2nd Quarter grassroots contributions totaling $637,137 compared to Congressman Murtha’s $113,155. A fluke? A few months of accidental luck? Well, the July totals tell a different story. Because of your continued vigilance and sacrificial support, we’ve now raised an additional $400,000 in the month of July! That’s right, $400,000 in July alone. Here’s the quick math. The first and second quarter totals combined shattered the $900,000 mark. When you add in July’s contributions, the new total is $1.3 million...

August 12, 2008, 4:00 a.m. ‘The Army We Need’The McCain/Obama debt to Rumsfeld. By Lawrence Di Rita In remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in April 2007, Sen. Barack Obama told an audience that “if the need arises when I’m president, the Army we have will be the Army we need.� The phrasing was an obvious shot at Chicago’s own Donald Rumsfeld, who in December 2004 in Kuwait told a deployed National Guard unit that the nation goes to war “with the Army you have.� Given Obama’s hostility to Bush’s strategy in Iraq overall, it is probably...

The "surge" in Iraq sure appears to have worked.  There are some who say President Bush should have listened to voices such as Senator John McCain and then Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki in the first place, rather than taking the foolish advice of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other "neo-con" hardliners. But before we give all the credit to the "more boots on the ground" stompers and all the blame to Rumsfeld and the neo-cons, let's take a second look at the surge. To set the stage, let's look at the results to date.  (In the...

When I created the “Infamous Monsters” post back in 2004, I did promise that if Bush won, I'd give equal treatment to the other side of the aisle. And he did. And so, as promised, here we go. Now, it's not as easy as before. The loony left and antiwar moonbats and their terrorist heroes are a lot easier to pair off with famous monsters. The people on the right all seem so garshed darn normal-looking. But isn’t that the worst kind of monster of all?* Now I don my tinfoil hat, and briefly transform into a nutroot moonbat. Dracula...

"The lack of an official endorsement from Rumsfeld most likely stems from the rift caused between the two over a statement McCain made in the past regarding Rumsfeld’s tenure in the White House. Rumsfeld, McCain declared, will "go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." An aide for Rumsfeld, Keith Urbahn, tells The Hill Rumsfeld no longer follows presidential elections. Instead he is focusing his energy on the Rumsfeld Foundation, an organization that encourages young people to participate in public service, and his memoirs. “Mr. Rumsfeld is a Republican,” however, Urbahn quickly points out....

High-Ranking Abuse by Ben Giles June 20, 2008 High ranking officials at the Department of Defense undertook the process of authorizing illegal interrogation tactics in the year following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in his opening statement. “In the process, they damaged our ability to collect intelligence that could save lives.” Assisted by questionable legal council from...

Rumsfeld repays McCain; declines to back candidate By Roxana Tiron Posted: 06/18/08 08:00 PM [ET] Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently declined to answer whether he will support Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president. McCain, the GOP presidential standard-bearer, has been one of Rumsfeld’s harshest critics. McCain has said that Rumsfeld will “go down as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.” The Hill talked to Rumsfeld earlier this month near his downtown D.C. office. Rumsfeld told The Hill that he has not followed the presidential elections, but instead has been focused on work for his private...

US Defense Department officials in late 2001 and 2002 concealed from the CIA and other intelligence agencies potentially useful information gleaned from Iranian agents, said a Senate report released Thursday. The Iranians told Pentagon employees about a tunnel complex in Iran used to store weapons and move its personnel covertly out of the country, likely into Afghanistan in the post September 11 war period, according to the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Iranians also told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the growth of anti-regime sentiment inside Iran, it said. The new report adds...

May 10, 2008, 8:30 a.m. Warring HistoryRethinking the Iraq critics. By Michael Barone In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we’ve learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists only could guess at what was going on behind the scenes. Today we’re only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes in...

...The latest revelations on the torture front show - the memo from John Yoo - as well as revelations from Phillippe Sands' book - means that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be at some point indicted for war crimes. They deserve to be...

Stanford Crackdown on Hoover by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 02, 2008 There’s only one thing that a politically correct university hates more than hosting a conservative think tank on its campus and that is when the guest scholar accumulates more prestige than the host institution. Then the institution of higher learning might make a hamfisted attempt to regulate the wayward scholars, applying discipline it would never dream of inflicting on its own faculty. Such a situation may be transpiring at Stanford. “You may have heard that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was offered a one-year visiting fellowship at the...

In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country. Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies. Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled...

One afternoon in late November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was flying back to Washington from the Army base at Fort Hood, Tex., where he had spoken with soldiers and spouses about the future of Iraq. Sitting across from him at his desk in the back of the Pentagon’s jet, I asked him about the possibility of another military conflict: U.S. air strikes on Iran. “The last thing the Middle East needs now is another war,” he said quietly. “We have to keep all options on the table,” he went on, reciting the standard caveat. “But if Iraq has shown us...

Short List of possible VP Candidates: Romney, Huckabee, Coburn, Hunter, Thompson, DeMint, Sessions, Lynn Cheney, Ingraham, Rush, Mark Levin, Lieberman, Giuliani, Condy Rice, Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, JOhn Bolton, Pawlenty, Sanford, Stallone, Chuck Norris, J. C. Watts, Jeb Bush, Michael Steele Any others? Have at it.

I admire Donald Rumsfeld. The former two-time Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff and Congressman is also a former naval aviator and a very successful private sector executive. Rumsfeld's life has been defined by public service of the highest sort. His leadership in the war, from the moment he went towards the crash site on 9/11, was defined by a relentless focus on the enemy, a focus so extraordinary that it made him a political liability and a target for every grouser inside the Pentagon and every critic of the war--for whatever reason-- outside of the building. His...

Today the people of Venezuela face a constitutional referendum, which, if passed, could obliterate the few remaining vestiges of Venezuelan democracy. The world is saying little and doing less as President Hugo Chávez dismantles Venezuela's constitution, silences its independent media and confiscates private property. --snip--With diplomatic, economic and communications institutions designed for a different era, the free world has too few tools to help prevent Venezuela's once vibrant democracy from receding into dictatorship. But such a tragedy is not preordained. In fact, we face a moment when swift decisions by the United States and like-thinking nations could dramatically help, supporting...

Rumsfeld Remarks at Churchill Dinner PATH TO VICTORY Refashioning Institutions for the 21st Century Remarks by Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Claremont Institute's 20th Annual Dinner in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, November 17, 2007.This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging challenges our country and the next...

French prosecutors throw out Rumsfeld torture case Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:27pm EST PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris prosecutors' office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday. The plaintiffs, who included the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said Rumsfeld had authorized interrogation techniques that led to rights abuses. The FIDH said it had received a letter from the prosecutors' office ruling that Rumsfeld benefited from a "customary" immunity from prosecution granted...