“But Chrissy said Glen was insane!” ~ ladyvet
As did a lot of power-hungry establishment RINOS.
However:
Rummy backs Beck’s suspicions:
EIB Interview: Donald Rumsfeld
February 8, 2011
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_020811/content/01125106.member.html
[huge snip]
RUMSFELD: No, they’re perfectly capable of lying, and they did. I mean take one of the rumors that was spread around the world about alleging that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet. There were riots in three or four cities, people were killed, and by the time the truth came around that there never was a Koran flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo, it was absolutely false, and of course the journalist that did it then said if there was some portion of their story that was wrong, they’re sorry, but the people were dead already. So these things are important. The thing that was on the backside of that however is that there’s something about our country that we’re reluctant to engage in a competition of ideas in government. We are up against a vicious enemy, the radical Islamists are there, they intend to try to create a caliphate in this world and fundamentally alter the nature of nation states, and we’re reluctant to engage in the competition of ideas and point out what they really are and how vicious they are. This current administration is even afraid to say the word Islamist. And we need to fight. We need to be willing to say what it is and be willing to tackle it. And thank goodness for people like you who are willing to do it.
RUSH: In context of all that, what do you make of what’s happening in Egypt? So many people are confused. I must confess I’m having a tough time finding somebody I believe is able to convince me what this is really all about.
RUMSFELD: Let me make a couple of comments in that regard. First, it seems to me that what’s important is private diplomacy, not public diplomacy. Public diplomacy tends to be aimed not so much at the people you’re trying to persuade, but to satisfy your own base and to make yourself look good. And one knows that the private diplomacy is what ultimately is going to be important. So it’s not surprising that those of us on the outside don’t have a perfect fix on what’s taking place. Second, I would say that there are without question — first of all, Egypt’s an enormously important country. It’s large, it’s historically important. From an educational standpoint it’s a big factor in the Arab world and what happens there makes a big difference to us. As you know well, we watched what happened in Iran where there was a popular revolution and the people that were the best organized and the most vicious took over the country. And they didn’t end up with freer political systems or freer economic systems. They ended up with the ayatollahs controlling that country.
RUSH: Well, that’s the thing. Are we looking at something similar here or is this really — I mean there are people telling us this is a democracy movement, we need to be fully, fully behind what’s going on here. If that means the ouster of Mubarak, then we must be for it immediately. We’re hearing that argument as well.
RUMSFELD: Well, you can have a perfectly legitimate democracy movement where there are a variety of people across the political spectrum who all agree that there needs to be change. The problem is the people who tend to be the best organized are the most radical and the most vicious. And so you can have a broad popular democracy movement and have it end being taken over by the most vicious people and the result is you don’t end up with free political systems or free economic systems, you end up with a handful of radicals controlling the country. That’s the risk.
RUSH: We’re speaking with former Defense Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld, former secretary of practically everything in his career in the US government. Were we surprised at what happened in Iran when we decided the Shah had to go? Was there intel that the ayatollahs might take over and form an Islamist government as they have?
RUMSFELD: There was certainly intel that suggested that the return of the ayatollah from, as I recall, Paris to Iran and that there were people who had extreme views. I think that the actual departure of the Shah came as a surprise. I don’t think our intel suggested that. There was clearly information that there was concern about the secret police, the SAVAK during that period, and the country had not moved toward freer political and freer economic systems.
RUSH: Well, people have the same fear that the process is repeating itself in Egypt.
RUMSFELD: That’s true. I mean it’s a perfectly legitimate concern. How it will come out, we don’t know. But if you think about our world and the relatively small number of countries where people are doing well and have opportunity, those are the countries with the freer political and the freer economic systems. The places where people are not doing well — my favorite picture as you probably know is that picture of the Korean peninsula taken from a satellite at night, and the same people north and south, the same resources north and south, and below the demilitarized zone you have this brilliant light with the 12th or 13th largest economy on the face of the earth and up north people are starving because there’s a dictatorship up north and a free system down south.
RUSH: We’re speaking with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
[snip] bttt