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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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| President Bush issues a strong statement in support for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has come under increasing criticism for his performance. The president says Rumsfeld is "exactly what is needed at this critical period." Several former U.S. military leaders have called for Rumsfeld to leave because of his handling of the war in Iraq. Michele talks with NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. |
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5343153 |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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Can you think of no other way to state your view that Rumsfeld's leadership is not the issue than what you said above? I believe your point is that it is not so much Rumsfeld and his incompetence as it is the President, "his friends," and what you seem to believe is a cynical war contrived mostly for personal profit or for the profit of U.S. elites, correct?
Why was it necessary to state that view sarcastically? |
No, I'll state my position directly..........
Rumsfield is so far up the President's derriere, when Bush gets hungry, Rumsfield grumbles............they are both pathetic and make America much less beautiful than she is. Killing young kids who need a job and believe in America has to be stopped from being a "career move".
DD |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| yeah. mr. fink gives the man way too much credit. |
Maybe you're right. The guy's got 30+ experience in the military and defense department. On the other hand, he's never actually fought in a war (his service fell between the Korean and Vietnam wars).
Then you've got Condi Rice and her PhD in International Relations or somesuch. I guess I just find it hard to believe that people with so much knowledge, so much experience and so many degrees could look at Iraq and think "yeah, we could have Saddam out and democracy in in six days tops" when an uneducated couch potato loser like me looked at Iraq back then and thought "this is gonna be a nightmare. What are they thinking?" How on Earth could I have turned out to be right and they so wrong? Unless, of course, this is precisely the end result they wanted all along. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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On the other hand wrote:
Quote:
yeah. mr. fink gives the man way too much credit.
...I...don't think that Mr Fink's theory is entirely implausible. I'm sure if you combed the history books, you'd find examples of nations striving to bring about chaos and factionalism in jurisdictions under their own control. Just off the top of my head...
Sounds like you buy into the "Yankee Imperialism" interpretation of U.S. intervention.
It all comes down to events cynically contrived primarily for their financial benefits? |
I believe that there were probably a number of factors at play in the decision-making process, and that, yes, some of them probably involved the self-interest of either the individual players or the United States itself. You would have to be naive to think that politicians or nations don't calculate self-interest into the equation when making decisions. And those interests wouldn't necessarily have to be financial.
I doubt that the war was fought SIMPLY to make Dik Cheney and his buddies rich. I was not agreeing with Sir Fink on that aspect of his opinions. Rather, I was trying to suggest ihat the theory that the US deliberately tried to provoke chaos and strife in post-Saddam Iraq is not as ludicrous as it might seem on the surface, and would seem to be supported by the statements of Bush himself.
But as I also said in that post: my own view is that the post-occupation fiasco is the result of very bad planning, and was not foreseen by the war architects. The "flypaper strategy" is likely just an after-the-fact rationalization to explain away the insurgency(which isn't even foreign-based anyway). But keep in mind that anyone who DOES say that "flypaper" was some brilliant strategy of Bush and Company is, for all intents and purposes, arguing that the US wants a civil war in Iraq. Becasue the difference between saying "I want more terrorists to go to Iraq" and saying "I want a civil war in Iraq" is a slight one indeed. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:32 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 11:57 am Post subject: |
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President Bush ended the week by restating his confidence in his embattled secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in unequivocal terms.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation," said Bush.
In some administrations, such language might not mean what it seems. It could even be read as an invitation for a cabinet member to resign, especially one as besieged as Rumsfeld. This week, the catalog of retired flag officers calling on him to resign reached half a dozen. Among them: John Batiste, a major general who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq, and Charles H. Swannack Jr., the major general for the 82nd Airborne as recently as 2004.
But when George W. Bush makes a foursquare pronouncement such as his latest on Rumsfeld, it resonates. And it is taken largely at face value. This president has stood by his friends, allies, appointees and supporters with uncommon steadfastness. In fact, loyalty may be his most salient virtue.
The question is whether that virtue, pursued beyond reason, becomes a kind of self-indulgence that neither the Bush administration nor the country can afford.
Something deep in the genetic code of the Bush family values loyalty highly. In fact, it seems to prize loyalty above practically all other virtues. It makes you wonder whether someone once did something very disloyal and very damaging to the House of Bush, back in the distant past or on a far bough of the family tree.
The first President Bush was sometimes criticized for being "loyal to a fault." He took personal relationships so seriously that he seemed incapable of turning on anyone he trusted. His first White House chief of staff, John Sununu, the gruff former governor of New Hampshire, threw his weight around in Washington with bruising effect. But Bush would not remove him until a scandal over his cavalier use of government airplanes made it imperative -- long after the political damage had been done.
Surely everyone regards loyalty as a virtue. And it has a special sheen when it appears in politics, where it tends to be rare. Looking back over history, a keen sense of when to desert your friends has been a useful survival skill -- almost as useful as a keen sense of when your friends are about to desert you.
But too much of anything, even a good thing, can be a bad thing. And there are times when a leader must weigh loyalty to an individual on the grander scales of national interest.
Rumsfeld surely presents a case in point. He has become the living symbol of the war in Iraq, not only because he is the Pentagon boss but because he pushed the specific decisions that turned a short-term victory into a long-term quagmire. He came close to the brink in April 2004, caught in the rage over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib that became a rallying cry for anti-U.S. elements throughout the Islamic world.
But when that moment of crisis came two years ago, President Bush went to the Pentagon to give Rumsfeld a high-profile endorsement. With the entire top echelon of his foreign policy advisors arrayed behind him, the president pledged to stand by his man. At the time it played as a gesture of supreme loyalty; in retrospect it seems more like a missed opportunity.
Personnel decisions are always complicated -- and no less so at the upper reaches of the federal power structure. Everyone knows how much Mr. Bush values the counsel of his vice president,...Cheney, whose Washington resume begins with service as a Rumsfeld staffer in the 1960s.
Cheney and Rumsfeld's careers have many points of intersection, culminating in the current one. So the president's loyalty investment here is twofold, and it reaches deep into the philosophical heart of his administration.
When does loyalty become a liability? Perhaps when it starts looking less like steadfastness and more like stubbornness. Or perhaps when it looks like a reluctance to admit the obvious. |
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5343951
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5343153
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| Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor is co-author of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and the Occupation of Iraq. He talks with Scott Simon about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's relations with military leaders. |
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5344072
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:32 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Those who count the increasing number of American soldiers killed in Iraq are missing the bigger picture, retired Gen. Tommy Franks said Saturday night.
"What we're talking about is neither 2,400, 24,000 or 240,000 lives," Franks said at the National Rifle Association's annual banquet. "Terrorism is a thing that threatens our way of life. It doesn't have anything to do with politics."
More than 2,400 soldiers have died since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the plan for which Franks developed and executed. He also oversaw combat in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"I watched as America changed," Franks said. "That's not near done. We have to secure ourselves. We have to secure our Constitution."
During his 30-minute speech, Franks took an occasional jab at the media and fellow generals for attacking Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"We haven't got any generals here. They're all in front of TV cameras complaining about Don Rumsfeld," Franks deadpanned. "Difference is, I know what I'm talking about."
Franks staunchly defended his friend -- even as he called him "grumpy" and "grouchy."
"I don't care about your politics. I don't. Don Rumsfeld is an American patriot."
Franks retired in 2003 after a 36-year career in the Army, highlighted by becoming commander of Central Command in June 2000.
He received warm ovations from the 3,000 NRA members in attendance.
"It makes me think about going into politics," Franks said. "The great blessing is that thought doesn't last long." |
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/21/franks.iraq.ap/index.html
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:32 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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Of course Franks backs Rumsfeld. To do otherwise would require him to admit that he was badgered by Rumsfeld (and caved in) to slimming down the Iraq plan to an unreasonable timeline and troop strengths.
I haven't read Cobra II but I thought Woodward's Plan of Attack made this abundantly clear. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:05 am Post subject: |
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| Cobra II does as well. Franks comes off as an anti-intellectual redneck (redundent description there I suppose). |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 10:47 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| Cobra II does as well. Franks comes off as an anti-intellectual redneck (redundant description there I suppose). |
It has him watching DVDs on a personal DVD player -- Dirty Harry flicks, no? -- rather than reading in his free time... |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
It has him watching DVDs on a personal DVD player -- Dirty Harry flicks, no? -- rather than reading in his free time... |
I'm looking forward to reading it (Cobra II) and am a little surprised you guys haven't started a thread about it yet! 
For Franks- you know you're about to lead the most advanced armed forces the world has ever seen into battle that may cost many many lives and may pit you against CBRN type WMDs, and you sit around watching Dirty Harry movies in your spare time instead of spending every available second getting ready... or perhaps even worse: you view watching Dirty Harry movies as a legitimate method of steeling yourself for the upcoming conflict.
Jeff Foxworthy would agree, I'm sure- yeah, that sounds a lot like a redneck. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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Well, it is an aside in the story but, yes, I share your disappointment.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:33 am; edited 1 time in total |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 5:48 am Post subject: |
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I'd like to be front row at one of those 'meet the public' photo ops, and then when he goes to shake my hand I suddenly do the hand-brush to the side of my head instead.
Same goes for Bush. Ahhh, to dream.... |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 7:51 am Post subject: |
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| So many high-ranking officers with supposedly brilliant leadership and management resumes -- Harvard MBAs, MIT Ph.D.s, CalTech, and on and on -- and a guy who likes to watch Dirty Harry movies in his free time is put in charge of the war |
I must at this point rise to say that I thought Dirty Harry was a pretty good film. |
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