Posted on 04/15/2006 5:27:53 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
April 15, 2006
Different day, different Today show anchor, different attitude. As we documented here yesterday, when Katie Couric hosted a segment on the matter of the retired generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld's ouster, she chose as her guest one of the generals calling for Rumsfeld's head. Her most notable contributions to the discussion were to invite her guest to take a shot at Pres. Bush as long as he was at it, and to ask why he didn't come out sooner with his criticism so he could have 'shaped public opinion far earlier.'
This morning it was Lester Holt's turn in the Today show host seat. Now, it might just be in the normal course of the news cycle that his guest was a former general who is opposed to Rumsfeld's departure. But there was no mistaking Holt's even-handed treatment of the issues, in stark contrast with Couric's cheerleading for the Rumsfeld-must-go crowd.
Holt set the tone with his introduction of retired U.S. Army general and an NBC analyst Wayne Downing: "To be clear from the outset he is not one of those generals calling for Rumsfeld's resignation."
Holt began with a two-part question. The first part put the fundamental issue in neutral terms, the second, interestingly, questioned the appropriateness of the generals' actions:
"Is the criticism of Rumsfeld valid, and is it appropriate for these retired flag-ranked officers to be calling for his resignation?"
Downing began by acknowledging "we all know mistakes were made after we started this war. I think there's no doubt about that and certainly that's something that retired guys and active duty guys talk about."
But then: "the second question, though, is a key thing. Is it appropriate to raise these issues in a public form by retired generals? I don't think it is. My comment to these generals is 'at ease'. At ease means, let's shut up, let's be quiet. This thing is serving no purpose. You have a stated thing calling for Rumsfeld to resign, that's not the issue. I mean, they know that Secretary Rumsfeld is not going to resign. He's not a quitter. They also know that this president is not going to fire him because that's not the president's style. He's intensely loyal to those who served him and who serve him like Rumsfeld does. The issues are other things."
Holt did press the matter in these terms: "Let's talk about those issues, though, because we know there have been missteps in this war, and many people would think, here are some officers who are directly involved in the war. Shouldn't we be valuing their input? Do they not bring something to the table that you may not hear in the usual partisan channels?"
Downing: "Lester, this is not the forum, the public press is not the forum because they know what they have called for is not going to happen."
Downing then made his most intriguing comments, implying that a number of the Rumsfeld critics have ulterior motives:
"One of these guys is writing a book. One or more of them have political aspirations. One of them has had his favorite program, the program that he worked on for the last three or four years while he was in the military, skewered by Secretary Rumsfeld. Others were not promoted for one reason or another."
Rather than attacking Downing's allegations, Holt recapitulated them: "So you're saying they could have axes to grind?"
Holt later offered up on his own a theory suggesting that the generals' criticism might have been motivated by something other than disagreement with Rumsfeld's military tactics: "General . . when Secretary Rumsfeld came into office as Defense Secretary, he came in forcing a new culture essentially saying the Cold War is over. We need a leaner, meaner, more lethal force. He brought that to Afghanistan. He brought that to Iraq with not the success that perhaps not the success that he expected. Is part of what we're seeing perhaps a sense of toes that were stepped on and a sense of folks who did not want to see those cultural shifts?"
Downing: "Well, not necessarily with these particular six generals. I think there are others that felt that way and there is some resistance to Secretary Rumsfeld because he has forced people to change and people don't want to change. I think it's very appropriate."
Concluded Downing: "He's done a lot of things right. There have been mistakes, Lester, but this whole thing of bringing this into a public forum, putting it all over the press, it serves the military profession not well nor do I think it serves the country well."
Holt's performance this morning was typical of his standards of down-the-middle journalism that others at Today and NBC would do well to emulate.
Lester will remain 'unqualified' with that attitude.
Liberals are by nature quitters. Why the heck we show ANY weakness is completely beyond me. Save the second guessing for after the war. And, these big mouthed generals? Hang 'em.
A must read, keep for your records.
The Hidden History of the Iraq War Critics
April 14th, 2006
http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5414
From little hooded monk (comments)
'The carping critics erect a rhetorical, if not imaginary, entity so they can bash it with charges of ''not enough troops'' and other hindsight insight.'
At Good Friday services yesterday, I learned a new word to define the political detractors of our President and his War on Terror policies...MUMPSIMUS.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mum1.htm
''there was once a medieval monk who persistently said a phrase in the Latin Eucharist wrongly, either because he was illiterate and had learned it that way or because it had been transcribed incorrectly in his copy./SNIP/What made this particular mistake memorable is what the monk was supposed to have said when he was corrected./SNIP/the monk replied that he had said it that way for forty years and ''I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus''.
As a result, the word came to be applied to someone who sticks obstinately to their old ways, in spite of the clearest evidence that they are wrong. The word can also have the related meaning of some custom or notion that is adhered to, even though it has been shown to be unreasonable.''
Deal with the facts. . .here's just one to chew on: Bill Clinton: "I loathe the military."
A must read, keep for your records.
The Hidden History of the Iraq War Critics
April 14th, 2006
http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5414
From little hooded monk (comments)
'The carping critics erect a rhetorical, if not imaginary, entity so they can bash it with charges of ''not enough troops'' and other hindsight insight.'
At Good Friday services yesterday, I learned a new word to define the political detractors of our President and his War on Terror policies...MUMPSIMUS.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mum1.htm
''there was once a medieval monk who persistently said a phrase in the Latin Eucharist wrongly, either because he was illiterate and had learned it that way or because it had been transcribed incorrectly in his copy./SNIP/What made this particular mistake memorable is what the monk was supposed to have said when he was corrected./SNIP/the monk replied that he had said it that way for forty years and ''I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus''.
As a result, the word came to be applied to someone who sticks obstinately to their old ways, in spite of the clearest evidence that they are wrong. The word can also have the related meaning of some custom or notion that is adhered to, even though it has been shown to be unreasonable.''
LOL
Zinni ran CENTCOM for a number of years and no doubt had invasion plans sitting on the shelf. I wonder if he felt slighted when those plans were used as doorstops?
A must read about Zinni...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142417/posts
Retired Generals Defend Rumsfeld
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006760.php
My first thought too.
Bet he's on 'sabbatical' come September.
Excellent link.
As I posted yesterday...
This is informative
The Generals' Revolt
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2006/04/generals-revolt.html
Firing spitballs at Rumsfeld
http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/4/14/194015/807
A pathetic display by soldier/politicians who were either bypassed for promotion or had their own bad ideas ignored. Its a CNN practise to dredge up these losers for display in trying to buttress the MSM agenda.
Kudos to Lester Holt for his interview with a sensible retired General Officer who has his head screwed on right.
What's the e-mail?
Zarqawi, al-Qaeda are heading out, U.S. general says
Liberal generals response: GODAMMIT THAT RUMSFELD HAS TO GO!!!!
Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday.
Let's only hope that this is true. It echos his last letter to Zawairi about the need for a new stronghold....but whereto?
The West Bank? Lebanon? Gaza? Egypt?
The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps.
"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Gen. Vines' statement came as news broke that coalition and Iraqi forces had killed an associate of Osama bin Laden's during an early morning raid near Abu Ghraib about two weeks ago.
Rafid Ibrahim Fattah aka Abu Umar al Kurdi served as a liaison between terrorist networks and was linked to Taliban members in Afghanistan, Pakistani-based extremists and other senior al Qaeda leaders, the military said yesterday.
In the past six months, al Kurdi had worked as a terrorist cell leader in Baqouba. Prior to that, he had traveled extensively Pakistan, Iran and Iraq and formed a relationship with al Qaeda senior leaders in 1999 while in Afghanistan.
He also had ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, formed while he was in Iran and Pakistan, and joined the jihad in Afghanistan in 1989, the military said. He was killed March 27.
http://flyingassmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/04/zarqawi-al-qaeda-are-heading-out-us.html
What a coincidence.
"Stuff Happens" play sears Rumsfeld in New York
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A play that skewers Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as arrogant and war-mad has opened to a largely favorable welcome in New York this week, even as former generals turn against him in Washington.
In "Stuff Happens," by British playwright David Hare, Rumsfeld is described as a "velociraptor" and at one point his character says "I could eat a baby through the bars of a crib."
The growing number of retired U.S. generals who have called for his ouster has not gone that far describing Rumsfeld, but the arrogance and failure to heed military advisers that they accuse him of are given dramatic life in Hare's play.
The play casts Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney as driving President Bush in a rush to war in Iraq, and portrays former Secretary of State Colin Powell as clashing with the others over the need for war.
"The play superbly captures the decision making, manipulations and miscalculations that have by now been thoroughly documented," the New York Post said in its review of the play. "'Stuff Happens' is a riveting piece of theater that well justifies the playwright's description of it as a 'history play,"' in the Shakespearean tradition.
First produced in London in 2004, "Stuff Happens" takes its title from Rumsfeld's quip dismissing the looting after U.S. troops entered Baghdad. Drawing on recorded quotes from Bush and his closest aides, the play recreates the build-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, including many closed-door scenes that Hare imagined entirely.
In contrast to Post and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal panned "Stuff Happens." As a documentary, it said, the play was "a flop, full of coarse caricatures and stiff with smugness," that stroked the preconceptions of an audience that "sniggered from start to finish."
The play has been updated since its first production, to focus more on Powell and his clashes with Rumsfeld and Cheney, who between them lay out the arguments promoted by neoconservatives who pressed for the Iraq invasion.
Bush comes over as an opaque figure but one who is the ultimate decision-maker, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair is portrayed as an idealist.
The New York Times in its review said an alternative title for the play could be "The Tragedy of Colin Powell."
"He is Brutus in 'Julius Caesar,' an honorable man forced to run a race he no longer believes in," the paper said.
It is for pushing the war and ignoring the advice of his top generals that the 73-year-old Rumsfeld has come under fire in recent weeks from a small but influential group of retired generals who have called openly for his resignation.
Bush has stuck by Rumsfeld even as criticism over the war has helped drive the president's approval ratings to new lows. Bush issued a statement on Friday expressing his full support for the defense secretary.
Reuters/VNU
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060414/stage_nm/rumsfeld_dc
We'll never know because Clinton was risk averse. He didn't have the backbone, nor did any of his SecDEFs, to do what Bush has done. By the way, there were active duty officers who criticized Clinton and paid for it with their careers. They didn't wait until they had retired.
Had Zinni publicly criticized Clinton while on active duty instead of waiting until after he retired he might be receiving more respect today. Although considering his anti-semitism along with his other ulterior motives that is unlikely. Same goes for the cabal attacking Rumsfeld. These officers followed the path of convenience not the path of conscience.
We can't have it both ways folks.
Sure we can. This is a partisan site. By its very nature the media is supposed to be objective and unbiased while functioning as reporters. Free Republic doesn't, nor does it need to, make that claim.
On the Rummy issue, once the LSM finally gets it into their thick skulls that President Bush is NOT going to fire him, they'll bounce back over to bashing VP Cheney. This morning's headlines are already trying to make it look as if he cheated on his income taxes.
They just need their pinata du jour.
Does anyone really believe that these hosts have the candle power to formulate their own questions?
Most of them seem to have difficulty correctly pronouncing the words written for them by the copy writers.
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