Posted on 12/23/2004 6:29:01 PM PST by fidelio
BC-APNewsAlert,0031
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visits U.S. troops at a base in Iraq where insurgents' attack killed 22.
AP-NY-12-23-04 2124EST
Will put in a link to a website when they all finally wake up...
"The best the Dems can hope for is to bring Rumsfeld down. They envision a 'Vietnam Uprising' scenario that destabilized our morale and eventually caused our withdraw from Vietnam."
I think this is a good news/bad news issue. The "Good News" is that the MSM now realize that their disrespect of GWB has no legs and is not getting them any traction whatsoever except with their cretin-like followers. So, they've re-trained their sights onto a highly visible symbol of the Bush administration - that's the bad news. Unfortunately for the MSM, Don Rumsfeld is not Klintoon like and is not going to begin apologizing for everything under the sun, thereby implicating GWB.
Is the answer to that a "Yes"?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1307671/posts?page=5#5
From the CNN Transcript of Rumsfeld's suprise visit:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we're getting beat up more than anybody else. I've been here -- this is my third tour over here, and we have done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy's Web sites and everything else are all over the media, and they love it. But the thing is, is everything we do good, no matter if it's helping a little k id or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn't pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?
RUMSFELD: That does not sound like a question that was planted by the press.
(LAUGHTER)
RUMSFELD: That happens sometimes. It's one of the hardest things we do in our country. We have freedom of the press. We believe in that. We believe that democracy can take that massive misinformation and differing of views, and that free people can synthesize all of that and find their way to right decisions. A
Out here, it's particularly tough. Everything we do here is harder, because of television stations like Al Jazeera and al-Arabiya and the constant negative approach. You don't hear about the schools are open and the hospitals are open and the clinics are open, and the fact that the stock markets are open and the Iraqi currency is steady, and the fact that there have been something like 140,000 refugees coming from other countries back into this country. They're voting with their feet, because they believe this is a country of the future.
You don't read about that. You read about every single negative thing that anyone can find to report.
I was talking to a group of congressmen and senators the other day, and there were a couple of them who had negative things to say, and they were in the press in five minutes. There were 15 or 20 that had positive things to say about what's going on in Iraq, and they couldn't get on television. Television just said we're not interested. That's just sorry. So, it is, I guess, what's news has to be bad news to get on the press.
And the truth is, however, it gets through eventually. There are people in the United States who understand what's really going on over here. They do understand that thousands of acts of kindness and compassion and support that are taking place all across this country. They do understand that large portions of this country are relatively peaceful. And something like 14 out of 18 of the problems it's had, incidents of down around five a day as opposed to the ones in certain places like Baghdad that are considerably higher.
And the Internet is helping. More and more people are seeing things that are taking the conventional wisdom and critiquing it and arguing it and debating it. And that's a good thing.
So, we are a great country. And we can benefit from having a free press. And from time to time people will be concerned about it. But in the last analysis, look at where we've come as a country, because we have had a free press.
And we've -- I mean, I've got a great deal of confidence in the center of gravity of the American people. What hurts most is in the region, where the neighboring countries whose help we need are constantly being barraged with truly vicious inaccuracies about what's taking place in this country. And it's conscious. It's consistent. It's persistent. And it makes everything we try to do in neighboring countries, where we're looking for support, vastly more difficult.
And we, as a country, don't do that. We don't go out and hire journalists and propagandize and lie and put people on payroll so that they'll say what you want. We just don't do that. And they do. And that's happening. And Al Jazeera is right there at the top.
Thanks for the ping.
Allow me to serve up our first Christmas Troll!
Mmmm, yummy! Christmas trolls are wonderful with cranberry sauce.
no eggnog for you
I'll get the grill.
Though I also disagree with Mr. Rumsfeld on some logistics matters, he is, in my view, of the same calibre of person as was George Marshall.
One of the differences between George Marshall and Don Rumsfeld, is that Marshall meant to build up our military strength and thus our capabilities, while Rumsfeld means to do things on the cheap, with McNamara-like efficiency tables, that has reduced capabilities, despite the appearance of high-tech adventures.
Marshall understood how much, we needed more of a logistics buildup, and he picked people to be in command, even before our direct involvement against the Japanese and Germans, who had experience with such buildups: Andrews, Eaker, Arnold, Eisenhower ...
They understood, that there would be, not only human loss, but loss of supplies and mishaps, by the several thousand tons, and several hundred ships and thousands of planes and tens of thousands of vehicles.
Rumsfeld is extra-sensitive to waste, because idle supplies are defined by the leftists as waste.
For the last three decades, the liberal media have lampooned the Pentagon for waste. Rumsfeld has tried and succeeded at keeping that "ball - and - chain" from wrapping around the general war plan in Iraq.
Yet, that has caused much more parsimonious decision-making that has hurt us, by ordering up several thinly supported missions, that have resulted in losses, both men and logistics, again, caused by not having enough backup support.
Shortages in World War II, were often because we did not have items in supply, despite an all-out effort. Shortages in this war in Iraq, are often because the supply has been restricted, by orders from the top.
If General Marshall had found that contracts had not been let, to make armored cars, he would have promptly replaced, despite his personal calibre, a Major Rumsfeld.
Still, Mr. Rumsfeld should stay, because, though he can be stubborn and resistant, he is more capable of learning what needs to be done, than many other possible replacements, even the few on the short list.
President Roosevelt needed General Marshall, to do the work that Roosevelt understood, needed to be done, but Roosevelt also understood, that he, Roosevelt, did not know much about, in the details.
We needed a producer and operator, and that is who we had.
Now, with Rumsfeld, we have an operator who is short on the producing side; but that, is much of the Bush Admnistration's doing.
They should correct it. We need many more aircraft, C-17's and small observation. The former to handle the loads, and to replace possible losses, and the latter to increase the observation and thus survivability of ground troops.
We are seriously short on both types of aircraft in the system.
We need to be able to move wide and fast, but the politicians in the Bush Administration have been sitting on the problem, because they are afraid for their own political hides.
That is a problem of the President. His job to run political interference.
They're having difficulty shedding a "lean and mean" philosophy that has been mistakenly been transferred to the supply (and production) side of lean and mean ops.
Lean and mean operations do not mean, that you can get by with less in the logistics train, especially in a high tech environment that requires ever more logistics support.
Mr. Rumsfeld should get a medal for proving a theory of just-in-time supported combat operations, can be ordered up and succeed; but, then, put the medal on the shelf and call up the aircraft plants and get with the program. Because we need holding and staying power, and also, we need more than a scheduled series of shotgun blasts.
We need sustainance.
George Marshall understood that very well. We need backup in the supply chain, with which to make a new branch, for unexpected needs.
That particular requirement, was the reason why Andrews, Eaker, Arnold, and Eisenhower were picked by George Marshall.
Eash man, during peacetime, had demonstrated the ability to expand the logistics to meet unexpected needs.
For Eaker, the responsibility of taking a peacetime Army Air Force and suddenly expand it and jump it over the ocean, so that upon its arrival in Europe and in Africa, it had expanded even while enroute, to become major air groups and air depots ... he had shown during exercises in the United States and elsewhere, before the war.
Yet, during the war, their came along various math wizards who helped to make the supply system more efficient.
Now, because of such scientific arrangments, we know more of what is where and why and where it's headed.
Yet the pipelines, though more scientific in efficiency of their flow, are under pressure by politicians to be made of smaller diameter.
That, in a peephole, is the problem that has got to get wrung out of the thinking. It is restricting operations support executives.
While I disagree with him on some matters, he is a neat guy and plenty capable. I can't think of a good replacement, unless Cheney and Rumsfeld agreed to change places, or maybe Shwartzkopf(sp?).
Your post reminded me of Winston Churchill and his re-directing money to produce "tanks" (the name being chosen to hid what he was really building).
God Bless Rumsie and his valiant efforts to repair and restructure our heroic fighting forces.
Rumsie needs all our prayers especially since the left wing media hate him and what he's been doing for 4+ years.
Your memory serves you well.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And to change that way of living, would strike at the very essence of our country. And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be.
You nail alot of points. But the experience in occupied Europe do not translate into occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is smelling like an imperialstic invasion not a war for the right things. This is a corporate carve-up. ( and all you guys who dine on dividends and stock gains can shoot me down )
PIFFLE
Mods light cigars with Halliburton payouts.
BANG!
Good shot.
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