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RUMSFELD RESIGNS
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Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:00 am Post subject:

Big_Bird wrote:

Pligganease wrote:

Adventurer wrote:

Rumsfeld is just the guy being made to take the fall. Enron executives were made accountable for things that didn't lead to people dying, and they went to jail. I think Rumsfeld's resignation is not enough.

Not comparable. Enron execs were deliberate in their intent to steal money from people.

Rumsfeld is just a moron who knew no better. He's not just the guy who is being made to take the fall. He is the man who directed war policy in both arenas. He was the one who made most of the mistakes.

I think he still has a case to answer. For example, even if you don't deliberately kill someone with intent, you can still be jailed for manslaughter in many cases. This is because our society considers life very precious, and there needs to be a consequence for negligent actions that result in the unnecessary loss of it. He played fast and loose with people's lives. And Cheney - he played fast and loose with people's lives in the interests of turning a profit and lining his own pockets. Scoundrel.

Concerning Rumsfeld, a man despised by elder Bush and who was known in the corporate world for being on the cutting edge of making companies more efficient, he was known as the 'axe-man,' it's hard to call this man 'a moron who knew no better.'

He pushed and bullied his opinions into practice, and as a result there were not enough troops (or entirely too many based on your perspective) in Iraq when Baghdad fell and the Iraqi army was disbanded. This despite being warned to the contrary. Sorry, not a moron, a smart man who was stubborn and refused to learn. Make mistakes, but if you don't learn from them, and Rumsfeld was slow to adjust his strategy in Iraq, then you should be canned.

After all, if Rumsfeld were Bush he would've canned anyone who acted like Rumsfeld a long time ago.

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 3:35 am Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

Yes, he strikes me has a horribly arrogant man. That arrogance has cost a lot of lives.

Junior

Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 4:19 am Post subject:

Always like rumsfeld. After seeing millions of Koreans protest against the US presence here, Rumsfeld announced "we can be gone in a day if you want". There were no more anti US protests in seoul after that.

cbclark4

Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:38 am Post subject:

Now that Rummy has resigned maybe the Army will get rid of those sissy pancakes they wear on their heads. I personally prefer the boonie. cbc Last edited by cbclark4 on Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Summer Wine

Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:48 am Post subject:

Quote:

I also noticed that in Iraq they've decided to let just about every Baath party member back at their original posts with no questions asked, and that's some good news too.

I must have missed something here. Why is that a good thing?

Just because every baathist wasn't an informer and technically responsible for the murder of their country folk, doesn't negate that probably a majority has some type of blood on their hands.

So why no questions about their roles? If they were low level does not in any way abdicate them from involvement unless confirmed and you pose no questions as a good thing.

Its as bad as Gestapo agents being used by the US in their anti communism actions post ww2 or the sweeping under the carpet of japanese attrocities, so as not to upset the status quo. This thing will probably become an issue in the future, if not for us at least for others.

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 9:03 am Post subject:

Summer Wine wrote:

Quote:

I also noticed that in Iraq they've decided to let just about every Baath party member back at their original posts with no questions asked, and that's some good news too.

I doubt that even close to a majority of members had blood on their hands. The difference between Japan and Germany of course is that there was no long-term guerrilla war after the war ended; here a large number of them joined the insurgency after being forbidden from getting regular jobs. It was also impossible to rise to high positions such as being a principal of a school without being a party member, so banning these people from working as well just because they joined in order to get a promotion they wanted was a bit ridiculous.

It's like the difference between the Nazis and the SS. Don't forget that the first person to expose what was happening in the extermination camps was a Nazi judge.

Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 4:39 pm Post subject:

Summer Wine wrote:

Quote:

I also noticed that in Iraq they've decided to let just about every Baath party member back at their original posts with no questions asked, and that's some good news too.

Summer Wine, the baathists were in power for decades, it wasn't just a fleeting fashion. To get anywhere in society, you had to be a member of the baathist party, that was the reality, thus many ordinary people just like you and me signed up. It's the same in China regarding the communist party. People join it cos it helps them get ahead in life - not necessarily because they worship Mao.

When the Americans invaded, some stupid neocon ideologues (with too much power and not enough common sense) had the 'bright' idea of sacking all members of the Baathist party barring them from their jobs and depriving them of their livelihoods. That meant a significant portion of ordinary people (and their dependents) were completely f***ed. This was one factor in the backlash against the American occupation.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 5:21 pm Post subject: ...

Quote:

Always like rumsfeld. After seeing millions of Koreans protest against the US presence here, Rumsfeld announced "we can be gone in a day if you want".

There were no more anti US protests in seoul after that. Laughing

Yeah, that's pretty funny. Care to put a date on when anti-US protests in Seoul ceased?

mithridates

Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:48 am Post subject:

Good photo and a good article here:

article

Quote:

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

ZAGARIT, Iraq, Nov. 9 � 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.

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.

Quote:

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.

spliff

Joined: 19 Jan 2004
Location: Khon Kaen, Thailand

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:14 am Post subject:

^The brave men and women of our armed forces deserve better than to be smeared by the spineless liberal morons that post here! I�d a thousand times rather die in their company than live forever in the company of spineless pussies stoned out in front of American Idol while stuffing their drooling maws with Doritos.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:24 am Post subject:

mithridates wrote:

�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...

�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.

Mithridates: thanks for posting this story. This is a point often overlooked.

When I was in the Marine Corps, we had to learn and memorize (by rote, usually) the names of each person in the chain of command up to the C-in-C. Most of us knew or cared little for these people, from the Secretary of the Navy to the National Security Advisor or Secretary of Defense. These names just had no relevance to us unless we were planning on "requesting mass," which was our right, but unheard of at that level, at least in my experience. After all, they were somewhere in Washington; we were deployed in the fleet. What did they have to do with us? (I think Blackhawk Down does a pretty good job of portraying this attitude amongst the Rangers and Delta in Somalia.)

Also, from the article...

Quote:

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...

"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."

In any case, people focusing on high politics and partisan-charged op-eds, and with little understanding for ground conditions, least of all in the actual military itself, tend to overlook these kinds of important details.

Why are these details important, some might ask? For one, they help us branch out and look at the complexity of things. It may be a given, but "the United States" and even "the Pentagon" and "the military" are far from the monolithic entities both the U.S. govt and their harshest critics sometimes make them out to be.

And, by the way, I think this embedded reporter missed a little on Lance-Corporal Davis's "exclamation about the irrelevance of the news." When Marines are "sprawled with rifles on the cold floor," or whereever it is at all they can sit or lay down and relax a few moments, they generally want to be left alone "to veg" -- and not get into discussions, least of all political discussions, esp. where all they really hear are rumors anyway, or "scuttlebutt." If they talk about anything, it might most likely be about MREs, liberty, how many "days and a wake-up" they have left to serve, etc., etc...

Ya-ta Boy

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:04 am Post subject:

Quote:

When the Americans invaded, some stupid neocon ideologues (with too much power and not enough common sense) had the 'bright' idea of sacking all members of the Baathist party barring them from their jobs and depriving them of their livelihoods.

At the end of WWII when the US took over in southern Korea, they didn't sack all the Koreans who had been in the Japanese occupation government, for which they are still roundly criticized in Korea.

Damned if ya do. Damned if ya don't. Ya just can't win.

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