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Donald Rumsfeld Resigns

Theo Huxtable.

By Theo Huxtable.
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SteppinRazor

SteppinRazor

Posted
Posted

he should of been out awhile ago. the gates guy is a proffesor at texas tech and is a friend of bush. he is suposably doing a study on reform in iraq and where to go form here type things.

 

the democrats aren't going to be reversing everything. they are going to try and restore a lot of fundamental things to the working class people and make a serious plan for iraq and our position there.

i wouldnt be suprised if certain tax credits are lifted. and more troops deployed for a larger effort in stablizing and relenquishing the country back to iraqi people

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.coma

.coma

Posted
Posted

anyone else think that ol' rummy's pullin a "ken lay"

 

 

 

 

<---------- says yes because there are alot of other people that have some explaining to do.

 

 

not to mention many in the cabinet/party are distancing themselves from bush.

 

i'd say everythings going according to plan.

 

now we just sit back an watch the greatest political set-up in history. (and if obama actually makes it, well that's just icing on the cake.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

just rembemer, its a problem/reaction game we're playing here.

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Larry Pubes

Larry Pubes

Posted
Posted
although i know nada about Robert Gates, his replacement.

 

dude is a perfect candidate for the bush/cheney crime syndicate:

 

Gates Has History of Manipulating Intelligence

By Jason Leopold

t r u t h o u t | Report

 

Wednesday 08 November 2006

 

Robert Gates, the former director of the CIA during the presidency of George H.W. Bush who was tapped Tuesday by the president to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, is part of Texas's good ol' boy network. He may be best known for playing a role in arming Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein with American-made weapons in the country's war against Iran in the 1980s.

 

Gates, who currently is president of Texas A&M University, came under intense fire during confirmation hearings in the early 1990s for being unaware of the explosive situation in Iraq in the 1980s, and the demise of the Soviet republic.

 

Gates joined the CIA in 1966, and spent eight years there as an analyst before moving over to the National Security Council in 1974. He returned to the CIA in 1980, and a year later was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as deputy director for intelligence. Five years later, he was named deputy director for the agency, the number two post in the agency. In 1989, he was appointed deputy director of the National Security Council and in 1991, when the first Bush administration was in office, he was named director of the spy shop.

 

During contentious Senate confirmation hearings in October 1991 - which are bound to come up again - Gates's role in cooking intelligence information during the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed. It was during those hearings that senators found out about a December 2, 1986, 10-page classified memo written by Thomas Barksdale, the CIA analyst for Iran. That memo claimed that covert arms sales to the country demonstrated "a perversion of the intelligence process" that is staggering in its proportions.

 

The Barksdale memo was used by Gates's detractors to prove he played an active role in slanting intelligence information during his tenure at the agency under Reagan. Eerily reminiscent of the way CIA analysts were treated by Vice President Dick Cheney during the run-up to the Iraq war three years ago, when agents were forced to provide the Bush administration with intelligence showing Iraq was a nuclear threat, Barksdale said he and other Iran analysts "were never consulted or asked to provide an intelligence input to the covert actions and secret contacts that have occurred."

 

Barksdale added that Gates was the pipeline for providing "exclusive reports to the White House," intelligence that was "at odds with the overwhelming bulk of intelligence reporting, both from U.S. sources and foreign intelligence services."

 

In testimony before the Senate on October 1, 1991, Harold P. Ford, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, described an aspect of Gates's personality that mirrors many of the top officials in the Bush administration today.

 

"Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been ..." Ford said.

 

At the hearing, other CIA analysts said Gates forced them to twist intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by the former Soviet Union. Analysts alleged a report approved by Gates overstated Soviet influence in Iran that specifically led the late President Ronald Reagan into making policy decisions that turned into the Iran-Contra scandal.

 

Jennifer Glaudemans, a former CIA analyst, said at the 1991 Gates confirmation hearings that she and her colleagues at the CIA believed "Mr Gates and his influence have led to a prostitution of [soviet] analysis."

 

Melvin Goodman, Glaudemans's former boss at the CIA, also said that under Gates, the CIA was "trying to provide the intelligence analysis ... that would support the operational decision to sell arms to Iran."

 

Gates testified at his confirmation hearing in October 1991 that he was aware the United States was selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. But he denied that he had any knowledge that Oliver North, the former National Security aide, was diverting money from arms sales to Iran to secretly aid the Nicaraguan contras.

 

But White House memos released at the time showed that North and John Poindexter, the national security adviser at the time, engaged in classified briefings with Gates on numerous occasions about Iran-Contra. Poindexter testified that he discussed the situation with Gates, but Gates said at his Senate confirmation hearings he had "no recollection" about those conversations.

 

Alan Fiers, a former CIA officer who served as an agency liaison along with North and met weekly with Gates, testified at Gates's confirmation hearings that he discussed specific details of the covert operation with Gates.

 

"Bob Gates understood the universe, understood the structure, understood that there was an operational - that there was a support operation being run out of the White House," and "that Ollie North was the quarterback," Fiers said at Gates's confirmation hearing in 1991. "I had no reason to think he had great detail, but I do think there was a baseline knowledge there."

 

If confirmed, Gates would arguably be overseeing a war that removed a dictator he personally helped to prop up. Tom Harkin, a senator from Iowa, described Gates's role in intelligence sharing operations with Iraq during a time when the United States helped arm Saddam Hussein in Iraq's war against Iran.

 

"I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates's role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq," Harkin said during Gates's confirmation hearings on November 7, 1991. "Robert Gates served as assistant to the director of the CIA in 1981 and as deputy director for intelligence from 1982 to 1986. In that capacity, he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually evolved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping, and narrative texts provided to Saddam may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran, but also in the recent gulf war."

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fermentor666

fermentor666

Posted
Posted

So I'm sure he's not exactly upset about it. In fact, I hear he wanted to resign earlier but left it up to the president, who probably waited so long to ask him to step down because he didn't want to do it before mid-term elections. It's no coincidence it happened the day after November 7th. It would have happened regardless of who wound up taking the majority in the legislative.

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IOU

IOU

Posted
Posted

Who's Rummy??

 

Published on Friday, November 10, 2006 by the New York Times

Marines Get the News From an Iraqi Host: Rumsfeld’s Out. ‘Who’s Rumsfeld?’

by C.J. Chivers

 

 

Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness on Wednesday night, knocking on the door of Mr. Menti’s home.

 

When Mr. Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.

 

Since then marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often planted bombs.

 

 

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr., right, taking a smoke break.(Joao Silva for The New York Times)

Mr. Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.

 

“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign. “Good.”

 

The marines had been on a continuous foot patrol for several days, hunting for insurgents. They were lost in the hard and isolating rhythms of infantry life.

 

They knew nothing of the week’s news.

 

Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”

 

Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”

 

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

 

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

 

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

 

If history is any guide, many of the young men who endure the severest hardships and assume the greatest risks in the war in Iraq will become interested in politics and politicians later, when they are older and look back on their combat tours.

 

But not yet. Marine infantry units have traditionally been nonpolitical, to the point of stubbornly embracing a peculiar detachment from policy currents at home. It is a pillar of the corps’ martial culture: those with the most at stake are among the least involved in the decisions that send them where they go.

 

Mr. Rumsfeld may have become one of the war’s most polarizing figures at home. But among these young marines slogging through the war in Anbar Province, he appeared to mean almost nothing. If he was another casualty, they had seen worse.

 

“Rumsfeld is the secretary of defense,” Sergeant McKinnon said, answering Lance Corporal Davis’s question.

 

Lance Corporal Davis simply cursed.

 

It did not sound like anger or disgust. It seemed instead to be an exclamation about the irrelevance of the news. The sergeant might as well have told the squad of yesterday’s weather.

 

Another marine, Lance Cpl. Patrick S. Maguire, said the decisions that mattered here, inside Company F, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, were much more important to them than those made in the Pentagon back home.

 

There are daily, dangerous questions: When to go on patrol, when to come back, which route to take down a road, which weapon to carry, and, at this moment, which watch each marine would stand, crouched up on the roof, in the cold wind, exposed to sniper fire.

 

His grandfather fought at Iwo Jima, he said, and his father was a marine in Vietnam. This was his second tour in Iraq. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Someone points a finger at you, and you go.”

 

“The chain of command?” he added. “You know how high I know? My battalion commander is Lt. Col. DeTreux. That’s how high I know.”

 

And so between the marines and Mr. Menti and his family, the split reactions to news of Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation made for surreal scenes.

 

Mr. Menti, 50, a radiologist by training, spent part of the afternoon trying to impress the meaning of the news on the young sergeant beside him on the couch.

 

The war policy was soon to change, he said.

 

“I think in one year you return to America,” he said.

 

The sergeant sat implacably.

 

“This is good for you,” Mr. Menti said. “No?”

 

He spoke of years of fear. Under Saddam Hussein, he said, they were afraid. Now, with the American troops and insurgents fighting in Anbar, they are still afraid. He returned to the news of Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation.

 

“People in America are very happy,” he said. “I saw this on TV. And I am very happy. Thank you, American people.”

 

He pointed at the young marines before him, smoking on his couches, drinking his hot, sweetened tea. “These soldiers, in Iraq, they make freedom?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” Sergeant McKinnon said.

 

“What kind of freedom?” he asked.

 

He had been talking about the living conditions in the province since the night before, when the marines appeared at his door.

 

There are almost no schools, he said. There is almost no medicine. There is little food, and no electricity except from generators. The list went on. No water. No work. Violence. Abductions. Beheadings. Explosions.

 

His son-in-law had been kidnapped by insurgents seven months ago, he said, and a note the insurgents left said he was abducted for being friendly with American troops. He has not been seen since.

 

In Baghdad, he said, Iranian-backed death squads were killing Sunni citizens. The country was falling apart.

 

“You like freedom?” he asked the sergeant. “This kind? This way?”

 

“No,” Sergeant McKinnon said.

 

“I think you and I and many people do not like freedom in this way,” he said. “I believe this. I am sure.”

 

“It is wrong, the American Army coming here. It is wrong.”

 

He looked at Sergeant McKinnon, who is younger than many of his 14 children. He was trying to draw him out.

 

“If American Army came here for three months, four months, O.K.” Mr. Menti said. “But now is four years.”

 

If there were no American military presence in Iraq, he said, there would be no insurgents. One serves as a magnet for the other.

 

Mr. Menti spoke to the sergeant as if he were an American diplomat, as if he had some influence over the broad sweeps of American foreign policy. The sergeant remained quiet and polite.

 

“I don’t think he realizes that we’re trying to make this country safer for him,” he said to Lance Corporal Maguire.

 

“I think he realizes that we’re trying to make it safe, but that the more we stay here the more people come in and make it worse,” Lance Corporal Maguire replied.

 

They went upstairs, to pack their gear for the next move, planned for after dark, to another house and another night of looking down on the roads, waiting for an insurgent with a bomb to step within range of a rifle shot.

 

Sergeant McKinnon spoke of the squad’s isolation. “I only found out yesterday that the Saddam trial was over,” he said. “Another Iraqi told me that.”

 

He turned to the task of planning for the night’s fire support.

 

Up on the roof, Lance Corporal Maguire mused about the news. Whatever Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation might eventually mean, it did not matter here yet, and it would not keep them alive tonight.

 

Another marine, Lance Cpl. Randall D. Webb, was scanning traffic through his rifle scope, worried that they had been spotted and the insurgents would soon know where they were.

 

“I think they see us,” he said.

 

“Man, they all see us,” Lance Corporal Maguire said, and lighted another cigarette.

 

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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