RUMSFELD SET UP; REPORTER PLANTED QUESTIONS WITH SOLDIER (DRUDGE SIREN)

He was a good man and he is missed.

another liberal gang-bang, like danny-boy rather's.

make up the news.

he started to care about it when it would affect him, sure. then he tried to see that others don't share the same fate. People do that all the time. why does that make him anti-American? Are the soldiers that cheered anti-Amercan too?

There are some here, along with Rush, that will protect these celebrity politicians at all cost.

The same celebrity politicians that support Mexico's Invasion of America--even during a time of war--that are running up trillions of dollars of debt that the next generation(s) will have to pay for--that are working hard to make sure RED China becomes a technological/industrial superpower on our dime--that are opening up social security to illegal aliens....that think immigration from Middle East nations that harbor terrorists is still a good idea….......

There is a word that describes these celebrity politicians to a tee.

This is way off topic here but I was just reading thru your profile and when I read: "Science says everything was created from the Big Bang theory and I say you have to have something that can go bang! But before both of them, there had to be nothing at one time which is an improbable scenario, so how can you explain this?" I had to chuckle.

One of my favorite "theories" of creation (and the "Big Bang") is that one day God sneezed and our entire universe was the result.

If our universe (and everything in it) are merely the 'particles' spewed forth in this single sneeze is it any wonder 'We have not even cured the common cold yet." ?

;^)

I think it is a legitimate question. I think we should demand that our troops be given the best equipment and I don't think they do. As much money as we spend on defense, I think we need better. I have heard from enough soldiers that they don't have the proper equipment, heaters, shoes, etc. This is totally bogus. It makes me just steam that the friggin bureaucrats in DOD can't stop wasting money on stuff and get the soldiers equipped.

Do we even know why they were cheering?
Do we even know WHO they were cheering?
Do you?

Thanks for your perspective ex 98C. I can't really address whether it's good or bad, although I am very much unwilling to come down on the reporter. There are too many journalists who are truely anti-American or willing to sell their country out for their own gain. I don't think this guy is in that category. My sense is that he has actually bonded with the unit and has developed friendships with these guys

Now FreedomNeocon, why would the person at the mike -- a sergeant, not a general, -- accept the suggestion of the reporter as to who to call on?

"Patton would have shot the reporter before he let him near his troops."

With one of his pearl handled revolvers?

.

Dan Rather, the MSM and Left were not the only ones soundly rejected by the MAJORITY in this past election. So were the so called "real" conservatives that campaigned heavily against Bush.

They L-O-S-T. Rather than GETTING OVER IT, they are exercising the same bi-partisanship they denounce Republicans for by joining with the MSM and DNC. 'Cause, you see, they all share one thing in common. They hate Bush.

The reality is that neither Bush, Rumsfeld nor the military wish to see their men and women without needed equipment. Soldiers have a right to express areas needing improvement, especially when asked. War is never perfect, there will always be cause for complaint. Our military was badly disadvantaged after the Clinton years and we cannot wait to rebuild everything before seeing to our security. Even if we did, something that couldn't be foreseen would suddenly be needed. If areas can be improved to get this equipment to them faster, they will be because they have no desire to see our troops DIE. The ABB crowd would have us believe Bush, Rumsfeld and the military don't give a damn about human life but that the MSM DOES.

I have no problem with Rummy's answer, nor the question itself.

My only problem is with the ABB crowd, the soldier that collaborated with the MSM, and the MSM itself.

I think we only have ONE steel plant that is able to produce the steel needed for the armor.

Bless you guys for bringing this up - We no longer have the industrial base to produce something that would have taken a weeks production in the old America.

We have lost our real strength - notthe army but our manufacturng base.

Look, I am a young guy - were are those old conservative Americans we can turn to to tell us the truth? I don't find them in any party.

please put up a sarcasm tag on that... at least I hope that was sarcasm.

I have some very patriotic veterans friends that are here on leave. They will go back and fight as bravely as true heros do.

They did express displeasure in the food and lack of armor on thier vehicles. They said they go so far as to hang body armor inside the doors of thier vehicles to assist stopping addition incomming.

Whiners, NO!

To bad this question had to be a plant. It is a legit question that needed asked . . . and Rummy gave a brilliant answer.

Astounding amount of newbies, trolls and usual suspects on this thread. Just astounding......yawn

I was just thinking the same same thing. I've spent the majority of the time on this thread looking at the sign-up date and past posts of these people.

This story must be in need of heavy spin since DU has the gang out in force to blast, Rush, GWB, Rummy and Free Republic.

I couldn't agree with you more. My husband, who is in the AF, was appalled by this soldier's question. There is a time and a place. But, after reading the transcript, Rumsfeld did very well. Listening to the MSM spin, says something very different.

Also, they have exposed a soft spot for the enemy to exploit, that is unforgivable.

Good thing it wasn't a fart, the world is nasty enough as it is. lol

Yes.

Bye!
He's dead, Jim!

He's dead, Jim.
(Click here or on the pic).

Thanks your post give me an excuse to post this...

Senate - October 17, 2003

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I understood that it would go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I take the floor to make a few personal observations. I don't want to revisit all of the arguments that have been made over and over again. But I do want to make a few statements just for the record. I want to make it very clear, speaking for myself--and I think for other Members of the Senate, but they can speak for themselves--that I have never challenged the patriotism, the motives, or the rights of any Senator who has disagreed with the President on this vote.

I have utmost respect for the senior Senator from West Virginia. I have watched him serve for many years. I watched him serve while I was a staff member for my father. He and my father served together in this body for many years. I would never, under any circumstances, suggest that I was challenging his patriotism in any way. I do think he is profoundly wrong in the decision he has made with respect to this war.

But I recognize that he has every right to make that decision. He has every right to defend that decision in as vigorous language as possible, but I want to make it clear to him and to any who may have misunderstood that under no circumstances and at no time have I ever challenged his patriotism.

I am not sure I know of any other Senator who has ever challenged his patriotism. I hope we will understand that as we disagree, as vigorously as we do on this issue, we are not, in fact, engaging in what has been called the politics of personal destruction.

I believe the Senator from West Virginia is wrong because I think his world view is wrong with respect to where the world is and where the President is going in the postwar world.

We all celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. There were books written about it. One was entitled ``The End of History.'' We found that history did not come to an end with the end of the cold war, that the challenges to American lives and American interests around the world did not disappear with the Soviet Union, and that we have additional challenges today.

I will not suggest that the Bush administration has done everything right. I have had my moments of disagreement with this administration, some of them relatively serious and some of them relatively recent. But I am behind the President in this effort because I think his overall global view is the correct one.

The primary challenge to peace in the world right now is coming out of the Middle East. For a variety of reasons, for a variety of historic patterns, that part of the world is producing the principal challenge to peace everywhere.

Europeans feel more secure than they have ever felt in their lives, and perhaps accurately and properly so. The Soviet Union is gone. The age-old rivalries between the Germans and the French and the other principalities in Europe are over. They are striving to write a European constitution and bring themselves together in a legitimate economic way. They feel more secure after centuries of war than they have ever felt in their lives. They are no longer the target. We are. They are no longer the focus of those who would bring instability to the world. We are. And we saw that happen in dramatic fashion on September 11, 2001.

The President has said there is no connection between what happened on September 11, 2001, and Iraq, and that is true, and the President never claimed such a connection. But there is an overall connection in the sense that those warriors for their cause who attacked us on September 11, 2001, came out of an area and a culture and an attitude that exist in the Middle East that must be addressed in the Middle East, even if there are no direct links, even if there was no direct funding, even if there was not a case that a law enforcement official could make in a court of law.

We must recognize the significance of the Middle East as the source of instability in the world and recognize those players in the Middle East who are part of that instability. I believe Saddam Hussein was a principal player for instability.

We can argue, appropriately, and we can go back and examine the mistakes that were made with respect to Saddam Hussein. We can say there are statements made prior to the attack on Iraq which, in retrospect, turned out not to be

true. I can list some of them.

No. 1, I heard in this Chamber that we were going to get body bags coming back from Iraq by the thousands. We were told in this Chamber that we were going to have house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, door-to-door assaults. We were told that our troops were going to be gassed--that from people who voted against the resolution to give the President the authority to go forward.

It turns out all of those predictions are not true. Do I attack the people who made those predictions as having botched it? I suggest they read the intelligence and came to the wrong conclusion. I also recognize that whenever this Nation or any nation goes to war, you never know exactly what is going to happen.

This is perhaps a small example, but it has struck me, as I read the history of the Second World War. As carefully as we planned the assault on Normandy, as carefully as we did the disinformation to get Hitler to think we were going to attack someplace other than we did, the disguises, the false information that was put out, all of the rest of the intelligence that was done, we made one very fundamental and, in retrospect, stupid mistake. In all of the training of our troops in advance of the Normandy invasion, we assumed that the hedgerows between fields in France would be the same height as the hedgerows between fields in Great Britain.

So as we trained in Great Britain, we trained with hedgerows that were about knee height and then found ourselves in France with hedgerows that were almost as high as a building. It completely disrupted all of our tank assaults and plans because as a tank would try to go up and over one of those hedgerows, it would be vulnerable to fire from the other side. They could hit the underbelly of the tank because its tracks were exposed and the base of the tank itself was exposed and an artillery shell could take it out instantly.

It was improvisation on the field from a GI who used to work on a farm who helped create what would be a version of a snowplow on the front of a tank to drive the tank through the hedgerow. An incredible intelligence mistake of something as simple as that, and they could have determined that if they could have found a French farmer to talk to.

Did this Chamber ring with accusations that President Roosevelt had lied to the American people about our plan in Normandy? Were there denunciations of General Marshall or General

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Eisenhower because they made that intelligence error? Some would say the analogy doesn't hold, and certainly there are many aspects of it that do not, but the point I think is legitimate. The intelligence failures that we now know occurred with respect to Iraq were not deliberate lies. The intelligence failures that have accompanied every American military action are the best efforts of human beings doing the best they can under pressure and always making mistakes.

What matters is the overall world view and strategic direction, and, as I said, I believe George W. Bush has the right strategic direction. He recognizes that the instability in the world is coming from the Middle East; that we must do everything we can to deal with those characters who are responsible for that instability. And he made the decision that one of those characters was Saddam Hussein.

I cannot believe anyone can look back on it and say that particular decision was the wrong one. As I have said here before, one of the first people who alerted me to Saddam Hussein and his capacity to spread instability throughout the world was Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, as we met with her in S-407 and heard her outline the description of weapons of mass destruction that were in Iraq. We heard her boss, the President of the United States, President Clinton, do the same thing in public fora.

Was there any reason to believe they were for any purpose trying to mislead the American people? We might say they were wrong based on what we now know, but they were wrong, if they were, because of the fog of uncertainty over the intelligence reports all of us had. They made the best judgments they could make on the basis of the best information they had, and then they moved ahead. President Bush did exactly the same thing.

There are those who say he has squandered our good will in the world. Everybody loved us after September 11. There were demonstrations in the streets in Europe, demonstrations of support, demonstrations of sympathy. How long would those demonstrations have nourished our position if indeed we had done nothing following September 11?

Oh, it is all right to do something as long as everybody is with you. It is all right to do something as long as everybody agrees. Well, it seemed to me the United Nations agreed. Fifteen to nothing strikes me as a fairly definite vote in the Security Council for resolution 1441.

Then when the United States said, all right, resolution 1441 is not being complied with, resolution 1441 says if it is not complied with, there will be serious consequences--serious consequences is U.N. speak for war--how about it, U.N.?

Oh, no, no, said members of the Security Council.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BENNETT. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Does the Senator know how much longer his remarks will be? I ask simply because I follow the Senator and I have an airplane to catch. It would be helpful if I could get an estimate.

Mr. BENNETT. I am glad to have the Senator tell me of his schedule and I shall cut it as short as I possibly can, because I do not want to disconcert the Senator in any way.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Not at all. When I served in Normandy, I saw a lot of things the Senator is talking about. It is very interesting.

Mr. BENNETT. No, I do not need to go on further because it has all been said.

I will conclude.

Mistakes have been made. I think both sides can admit that and should recognize that. People have been offended by the administration on both sides of the aisle. I think we can recognize that and admit that.

The fundamental question to me is whether the overall direction in which the President is trying to take the country is the right one. As I study history and as I listen to the reports that come back from Iraq, as I talk to the people in Utah who are serving there--we have a higher percentage of our Armed Forces who are Reserve and Guard in Iraq than any other State--I am convinced the President is right in his overall direction. Whatever course corrections need to be made we can talk about, but when all is said and done, this President has done the right thing.

I am proud to have voted to give him the authority in the first instance, and I am proud to be one of the 87 Senators today who have voted to give him the continuing support he requires.

I yield the floor.