Did Rumsfeld get a blow job?

Obviously, then, his decision was a brave one, very much unlike Clinton's.

there is a big difference between doing nothing in the context of nothing and doing nothing in the context of a war. in the second case a better opportunity is more likely to be executed.

How often has Rumsfeld held back in Iraq because people might die? It sounds remarkably close to his decision not to close off the border of Afghanistan, and to let Bin Laden go free in Tora Bora because he didn't want to shed any blood.

Not one drop of blood... for Al Qaeda. Unless they're in Iraq.

the world isn't quite the game of Risk that Bill Kristol thinks it is.

Bill Kristol is a slobbering neocon idiot. And, he lose his ass at Risk within the first 30 minutes.

Like Kevin, I cannot judge whether Rumsfeld was right or wrong. Nor can I know whether Clinton was right or wrong to scuttle certain operations. I do know that Clinton took relatively little anti-Islamist action, whereas Bush took, if anything, too much action.

Pakistan is a delicate problem. How should we fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Waziristan without destabilizing Musharaf's government? If we leave the Taliban and al Qaeda alone, they will grow stronger and they may overthrow Karzai's government. OTOH, if our actions embarass Musharaf to the point of resulting in his overthrow, Pakistan could become a nuclear nation ruled by Islamists.

Grenada syndrome.

When something is going to happen, everyone wants in on the action. Let me see if I can remember how my brother (who was there) described Grenada - IIRC he said they had Air Force planes, taking off from Navy carriers, with Army pilots, when all that was needed were a few Marines.

I'm sure Rumsfeld appreciates your endorsement, but I still think it was a lousy decision.

And remember that Clinton needed to act before the 9/11 attacks. As this administration never ceases to remind us, 9/11 changed everything.

If internal consistency would be something republicans care about, there wouldn't be a republican party.

Steve did fine, but we've missed ya, Kevin.

Halfway through the second paragraph I was thinking "someone needs to compare this to the way Clinton was bashed" and there it was in next paragraph. Sounds like you're tanned, rested and ready.

I do know that Clinton took relatively little anti-Islamist action

And whenever he did, wingnuts took to the air to scream "Wag the Dog!" as if it were something clever. Now, of course, the same wingnuts go on and on about how Clinton coulda shoulda done more blah blah blah.

And being in the New York Times, this story might even be true.

Where's Osama???

What a pathetic joke that this Administration, for all their tough talk about terrorism, is going to allow the man who inspired the 9-11 attacks to die of old age a free man, instead of in a U.S. prison.

Talk is cheap, isn't it?

Or maybe none of these people knows their ass from a hole in the ground. Otherwise, we might be fighting back against the people who are actually attacking us by now:

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

And yes, three of the seven doctors/medical school students involved in the London car bomb plots were Saudi-born.

And here's something else that just came across the wires:

"RAMADI - A Saudi man was detained while trying to carry out a suicide bomb attack in a truck carrying canisters of chloride in the western Sunni city of Ramadi on Friday, police said."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07265514.htm

And from back in Afghanistan:

"Police in Kabul say they detained a man from Saudi Arabia whom they accused of planning suicide attacks against high-ranking government officials."

http://www.wlfi.com/Global/story.asp?S=6741062

And the beat goes on . . .

This is strange but I agree with both Kevin and ex-liberal simultaneously. When I read the story, I thought in this particular case, Rummy might have made the right call. Of course there is no way to judge from the outside looking in. I would really like to hear the argument for second guessing the decision.

From a marketing point of view, early 2005 is a lousy time roll out a new product.

Facts made no difference to Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote that historicaly inaccurate Path to 9/11 tv movie, which critized Clinton/Berger for aborting a mission

Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is back from a hasty trip to Iraq and informs us that the U.S. has the insurgents "on the run."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, concurs that insrugents are "on the run."

And then there's this from Page One of The Washington Post today:

NEARLY 150 KILLED IN BOBM ATTACKS IN IRAQ
Scores injured in multiple suicide attacks, including a massive assault that struck a village market; U.S. reports deaths of 8 American troops.

The "insurgents" ARE on the run. Unfortunately, they like to run into crowded areas with high explosives strapped to themselves.

I too remember the Republican wails of "Wag the Dog!" every time Clinton struck at the terrorists. If the Republicans had any shame they would have resigned en masse after 9/11.

Hmmm. Sounds like another instance of Fundamental Attribution Error:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

truefacts:

Look at where Armila and Zargosh are in Iraq.

I just happen to have a map handy. Salaheddin province has been relatively restive up to now. The Kurdish areas were the successes they pointed to, until recently. (We won't get into the bit about looking the other way on the Kurdish terrorists who, over the last two and a half decades have killed ten times more Turks than Americans lost on September 11. Some war on terror, that.)

The "insurgents" ARE on the run. Unfortunately, they like to run into crowded areas with high explosives strapped to themselves.

And every time we turn a corner we end up in the middle of one of those exploding bridges.

This story, following July 2006 revelations that the CIA had previously disbanded its Bin Laden unit, gives lie to one of the central tenets of the so-called Bush Doctrine: no safe havens for terrorists.

For the details, see:
"The Pakistan Raid: So Much for 'No Safe Havens.'"

... whereas Bush took, if anything, too much action....Pakistan is a delicate problem..... ex-lax at 9:25 PM

If by too much action, you are referring to attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 and then doing everything possible to insure that the war and occupation would be counterproductive, you would be beginning to figure it out.

Bush sacrificed much of our leverage with Pakistan

...In May 1998, India conducted a series of unannounced nuclear tests that evoked inter-national condemnation. Pakistan reported conducting its own nuclear tests less than three weeks later. As a result of these tests, President Clinton imposed wide-ranging sanctions on both countries, as mandated under the Arms Export Control Act. Many of these sanctions gradually were lifted through congressional-executive cooperation from 1998 to 2000. The remaining nuclear sanctions on India (and Pakistan) were removed by President Bush in September 2001.

After the Musharraf coup, Clinton used a policy of engagement to encourage restoration of civilian rule. Bush has embraced the dictator despite his claims to promote democracy.

As with the rest of the Bush foreign policy, he has managed to make every difficult situation in the world worse. The way they trashed American foreign policy ideals for the past 60 years is astonishing. It's an amazing accomplishment.

We can only hope that the rest of the world will give the US another chance when, once again, adults take charge.

Kevin: "Rumsfeld may well have made the right decision."

If Rummie did make the correct call, it certainly wasn't on purpose, and he sure didn't let it happen again.

Wait a minute. Let me get this straight.

Strong intelligence showed the time and place of a meeting of Al-Qaeda's leadership and Rumsfeld called off the mission?

And I'm supposed to be reasonable and give Rumsfeld a break?

Why?

Is Disney going to make a movie about it? Is he going to be roasted on the cable shows for a month or two?

There's one reason why the GWB admin always seems to keep holstering their gun every time they have AQ in their sights -- because without AQ, the Bush cabal has no purpose.

Let's See,

Kevin has no Military experience,

and Rumsfeld has very little,

and Clinton has no military experience,

And low and behold, they all agree, the OIC's must all be idiots...

Thanks for sharing Kevin

Here's the larger question:
Does everyone realize that Pakistan is one bullet away from being a jihadist state with nuclear weapon's? What are we afraid of in Iran? Pakistan's just around the corner - and it's already armed.
What is this mis-adminstration doing about it? Praying? Keeping it's Cheeto-stained finger's crossed?
We need some serious diplomacy. And we have an adminstration that can't even spell the word.
We need leadership that can negotiate the end of nuclear arm's. We need to get China and Russia to agree. Hopefully, they "love their children, too..."
MAD, is madness. We've survived it for 60 year's. Any taker's on the next 60?
I'm not a betting man, but I wouldn't want to lay odd's...

Blue Girl

I think your brother must be wrong.

You can't fly an Air Force plane from a Navy Carrier-- at least not a fixed wing plane (no tail hook).

And the Army doesn't fly fixed wing aircraft (except for some spotting planes).

So unless referring to helicopters, it doesn't make sense.

What was true about Grenada was there was significant intraservice confusion-- it led, in part, to the passing of the Goldwater-Nicols act, I believe. Until that point, there had been no way in the US military command system to have a supreme commander from one service, command all of the USN, USAF, USMC and Army units in theatre.

There were a number of striking mistakes. A simple example, USN SEALs, who are reconnaissance and demolition troops, were deployed to rescue US medical students and the former prime minister. Pinned down and facing a foe with armoured vehicles, every SEAL on the mission was wounded.

That scene in Heartbreak Ridge where the Marines use their international calling cards and a phone booth, to get naval gunfire support via calling their home base, is apparently historical. For all the fact the Marines are an adjunct to the USN, apparently they hadn't enabled the Marines to call gunfire support from offshore.

You can't fly an Air Force plane from a Navy Carrier-- at least not a fixed wing plane (no tail hook).

Tell that to Billy Mitchell!

“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,� Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.�

OR maybe the Bush administration, with it's need to hire cronies and party loyalist, is an abysmally dysfunctional apparatus, lost in a sea of conflict between self-serving agendas that never seems to afford time to take care of the primary intestest of the country.

The Bushies are too busy hiding evidence, trying to stop leaking, trying to keep the GOP on board, bailing Libby out of jail, telling the Democrats "no way" while simultaneous pretending the war is not a lost cause, and telling the TV media that Dems are really just playing paritsan games.

Bush's latest poll number is 26% and the Libby fallout might not have hurt Bush as much as it will hurt the GOP with half the conservative voters disagreeing with the Libby communte, AND not to worry cause, as always Bush has unlimited self-serving tricks up his sleeves. The members of the GOP are fools if they think Bush won't screw the GOP over, the way he screwed Powell, screwed Paul O'Neil, screwed Aschroft and a host of generals who put earnest interest in the national affairs of our nation. Bush spend all his capital on burning though traditional conservative values, but it isn't as if the GOP just didnt't sit back and were happy to watch Bush do.

So come 2008, I sure as hell DON'T want to hear any bitching from the GOP members about what Bush did to them and their party base.

DAY

I don't think the US deployed B25s over Grenada?

DAY

Wasn't Doolittle with the Army Air Force?

Which hasn't existed since 1949? (the Key West Agreement)?

"We can only hope that the rest of the world will give the US another chance when, once again, adults take charge." Posted by: Mike on July 8, 2007 at 1:15 AM

Don't bet on it. If Bush had been defeated in 2004 it would have been a different matter, but by then the fact that he condoned torture, dismissed Geneva as "quaint" and Gitmo and extraordinary rendition of the nationals of other countries without their knowledge/consent (even from supposedly close allies, see Canada's Maher Arar as one example of this) and Abu Ghraib had already been revealed in part (since the full story was and to this day still is being suppressed) yet there was not a massive revulsion and rejection of Bush then. That is how it looks to most outside America, and unless Bushco is impeached prior to leaving office I simply do not see anyone being willing to give any benefit of the doubt nor any slack/trust to America for a very Very VERY long time.

I really don't think Americans truly understand just how much damage Bush43 has done to the reputation of not just the country but of the citizenry for "re-electing" him in 2004. Even those that travel abroad a lot I don't think grasp the full extent although they are at least partly cognizant of this sentiment. America betrayed all she stood for with Bush43 in his first term and Americans are seen as endorsing that betrayal by not massively rising up in disgust and overwhelmingly rejecting Bush in 2004. The fact that record levels of votes against him does not change the ugly reality that even more voted for him, and that is how it looks to those who do not pay a great deal of attention to domestic American politics.

Americans are too distracted by their iPhones and their big-screen plasma TVs and the 24/7 coverage of Paris Hilton's latest hangnail, to care about what the world thinks of us, Scotian. Although I agree with everything you have written.

When all the bad checks that Bush and Co. have written come due, and taxes have to be raised by 40-50%, just to pay the interest on the $1 trillion+ that Georgie and team have rung up, only then will people start to pay attention. And that day is not that far away....

" America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."
- Hunter Thompson

I used to think that this quote (from the '60's I believe) was excessively cynical. But, nowadays I'm not so sure. If anything it applies to a much greater degree.

ValueThinker - I can't remember exactly how he said it, and he hasn't answered his email this morning. His point, which I probably mangled, was that everyone just had to have a piece of the action. I hope I didn't nullify the larger point by mangling the particulars.

There isn't enough information in the Times story for us to say Rumsfeld was wrong, but there is enough for us to say Clinton was right?

Since the current frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination enjoys that status by virtue of being Bill Clinton's wife, the question is a little more than merely academic. For now, let's just be aware of the big differences between launching an anti-terrorist operation against a target in a country with a government openly hostile to us, sheltering the terrorists, and without nuclear weapons and attempting an anti-terrorist operation in a country with a government allied to us and possessed of a nuclear arsenal.

Clinton chose, repeatedly, not to attempt the first; Rumsfeld is reported to have decided against the second on this one occasion. Kevin rightly says there isn't enough information to determine if Rumsfeld did the right thing in 2005. There is a great deal more information available about the 1990s, however, and as intelligence experts like Scheuer and Coll have made clear the Clinton administration shrank from striking al Qaeda whenever it had the chance to.

This conclusion is obviously inconvenient for Bill Clinton's wife, but there is nothing stopping her from acknowledging where her husband screwed up and discussing how she would do better. We'll see what she says.

Since we're on the subject of Bill Clinton and terrorism, I'd like to ask, why is it that Bush gets a pass for 9/11 even though he was in office eight to nine months before it happened, while Clinton doesn't get a pass even though he was in office no more than six weeks when they tried to destroy it the first time? Granted, we got lucky, but if it had been brought down, it'd have been blamed on Clinton, while Bush Sr. would have received no criticism. Isn't that absurd?

ex-lib: I do know that Clinton took relatively little anti-Islamist action, whereas Bush took, if anything, too much action.

zathras: Clinton chose, repeatedly, not to attempt the first; Rumsfeld is reported to have decided against the second on this one occasion.

fewer americans died by terror while clinton was president...

g.w.bush fixed that...

hows that working out?

Thanks for sharing Kevin

Posted by: S Brennan

I just love these guys who deny anyone without military experience the right to have foreign policy opinions.

Made-to-order fascists.

mr. irony: fewer americans died by terror while clinton was president...

True. And the Nazis killed fewer people during Neville Chamberlain's regime than during Winston Churchill's.

Isn't that absurd? Brian at 11:48 AM

Don't bet on it. Scotian at 9:47 AM

...they all agree, the OIC's must all be idiots... S Brennan at 4:07 AM

Okay, it's Federer again. But it could have gone so easily to Nadal. Some great points both ways.

And the Nazis killed fewer people during Neville Chamberlain's regime than during Winston Churchill's. ex-lax at 1:05 PM

Just one point: a lot of the indictment of Bill Clinton has as its unspoken touchstone the idea that if Bill had only cruise missiled Osama, 9/11 wouldnt have happened. Only rolling up thte entire network would have done that.
clinton (and Richard Clarke) were right to concentrate on the crime prevention part of the anti-terrorism fight. It's what saved us from the Millennium bombing.
It's entirely possible that if Clinton had taken out OBL, 9/11 would still have happened, and the Republicans would be shrieking "Why didn't Clinton take out Ayman al-Zawahri?" and/or "It's clinton's fault! He brought this on by stirring up Al-Qaeda!"

Briefly to Brian's question upthread: Bush does not get a pass for continuing to ignore the threat from al Qaeda in the months he held office before 9/11.

Having said that, the question recurs as to whether the Clinton administration's policy toward al Qaeda was correct at the time and would be readopted by the next Democratic administration. For campaign purposes Democratic candidates, especially Bill Clinton's Wife, have strong reasons to answer the second part of the question with "of course not" without addressing the first part. There are obviously some people who believe that the answer to both parts of the question is unquestionably yes, but with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich none of them are running for President.

Al Qaeda grew and prospered for eight years while Bill Clinton was President, killing some Americans and a somewhat larger number of non-Americans and preparing unmolested for bigger things. If the next President is a Democrat many of the same people who implemented its policy will implement policy once again. The country deserves to know if the passive, reactive policy of the Clinton administration toward terrorism was really, in the view of Democrats running for President, the best the country could do.

the Clinton administration shrank from striking al Qaeda whenever it had the chance to.

Complete and utter BS. It's a testament to how completely fucked up the policies of their demigod GWB is that the wingnuts keep revisiting this crap.

If the next President is a Democrat many of the same people who implemented its policy will implement policy once again.

What we do know is that if SCOTUS hadn't stolen the election for GWB, Gore would have gone ahead with the plans to attack AQ for the Cole bombing. Face it, you wingnut freak, your boy not only let 9/11 happen, it couldn't have happened without him.

Red State Girl

Fair enough. It may have been Army helicopters off Navy ships.

The whole thing was something of a mess. Fortunately it didn't matter much, and not many people got killed (at least on the US side).

That, and the Iran rescue mission, (and the US Marine Barracks bombing 2 weeks before the Grenada invasion, that cost 241 lives), were the nadir of the US military competence.

After that they really dressed up their act, leading to the successes of, amongst others, Desert Storm and Kosovo.

There are (some) disturbing signs that the toll of the Iraq/Afghanistan situations has included some of that operational competence-- loss of the experienced and dedicated NCOs, captains, majors and colonels who make an army successful.

mr. irony: fewer americans died by terror while clinton was president...

ex-lib responds: True. And the Nazis killed fewer people during Neville Chamberlain's regime than during Winston Churchill's.

and despite it being a WORLD war...

ww-2 was shorter...than bush's war..

heck of a job

huh

zathras: The country deserves to know if the passive, reactive policy of the Clinton administration toward terrorism was really, in the view of Democrats running for President, the best the country could do.

as opposed to what the nation-building and invasion-happy GOP have given america IN REALITY?

shorter zathras: bu..bu..bu..bu..bu..bu..clinton

its not funny anymore...

Zathras:

"Al Qaeda grew and prospered for eight years while Bill Clinton was President, killing some Americans and a somewhat larger number of non-Americans and preparing unmolested for bigger things. If the next President is a Democrat many of the same people who implemented its policy will implement policy once again. The country deserves to know if the passive, reactive policy of the Clinton administration toward terrorism was really, in the view of Democrats running for President, the best the country could do."

Others have already pointed out that Clinton indeed did take action against Al Qaeda. This has been pointed out time and again, and you still choose to post the same lame old talking points which have been conclusively refuted.

And your chutzpah in posting "failures" of the Democrats leaves me utterly breathless, considering the clusterf*ck that Iraq has been. I do agree with you in one way, though. You look at the past few presidents of either party, and those who ran for that office, and you think, man, we've got 300 mil+ people living here, of whom I would guess AT LEAST 100 mil are eligible to run for President who are 35+ years old and of native birth. Can't we do any better than these bozos?

Anent Al Qaeda and taking them out: if Al Qaeda could have been disbanded and Osama held where he couldn't get dialysis, would that have prevented 9/11? Probably, but another such incident would have occurred sooner or later, because there are lots of Al Qaedas and lots of Osamas in the Arabic world. Don't get me wrong; I don't believe that all of Islam is out to convert or kill us. Just their fundamentalists, for the most part. But the Arabs do have legitimate grievances, and as long as those are not addressed, there will continue to be Al Qaedas and Osamas who will have varying degrees of success in promulgating terrorist acts.

Shorter NY Times: Rumsfeld nixes plans to invade a country that hasn't threatened the US.

Um, what is the argument that Rumsfeld had the power to order an attack on Pakistan? The Constitution says the power to declare war lies with Congress, not with some high-level bureaucrat in the Pentagon.

The US has more to gain by following international law, and insisting other countries do the same, than by playing cowboy and insisting on the right to invade any country, even allies, at any time.

The US has more to gain by following international law, and insisting other countries do the same, than by playing cowboy and insisting on the right to invade any country, even allies, at any time.

That horse left the barn quite awhile ago.

Somehow I don't think that that had a damn thing to do with Rummie's decision.

Carl

I think it's naive to think that if the US finds actionable intelligence of al Quaida operatives in a country where the local political system would simply tip them off, it doesn't have the right to grab them. I don't know what chapter and verse of international law says that, if any, but there is moral right.

These people murdered 3,000 people on American soil in one go, (besides several hundred Kenyans, Tanzanians and Americans, and 17 US sailors in Aden etc. etc.), and will repeat the trick, on ever larger scale until they are hunted down and brought to justice.

I am a bleeding heart liberal British internationalist, and if there were terrorists who had done that to my country, sitting safely in another country, I would want my government to go after them, if it could.

"Until that point, there had been no way in the US military command system to have a supreme commander from one service, command all of the USN, USAF, USMC and Army units in theatre."

This would have been surpirsing news to Adm. Nimitz, Gen. MacArthur, and Gen. Eisenshower . . .

Were the various special ops groups like the SEALS and the rest supposed to be the ones who went in with just a few men and got the job done? Why thousands of troops instead of the few?

There's a disconnect here. Are they being tasked with mission that are beyond what they are trained and equipped for, or is there something else going on?

I've been implying it for years, but I'll just say it:

Bush is protecting Osama bin Laden.

Not because he *needs* him, to keep us in fear. But because his MASTERS in Saudia Arabia the Carlyle Group board of directors, need bin Laden, as a figurehead, for their false flag ops.

The War On Terror is a sham, and a con-job, and the greatest crime in human history.

And Bush's followers are nothing more than simple marks.

rea

Of your 2 examples, one proves my point (at least).

I'm not an expert on Goldwater-Nichols, however it did create the role of theatre commander (CENTCOM etc.).

In the case of the Pacific War, Chester Nimitz and Doug Macarthur did both report to George C. Marshall-- neither was subordinate to the other. And they fought like tigers-- the US pursued a 2 prong strategy in the Pacific, and invaded the Philippines, to satisfy Doug Macarthur's ego.

This problem bedeviled COMSUMACV (General William Westmoreland) in Vietnam. He didn't control his theater naval and air forces.

On the European theatre of operations, I am not sure how the naval forces were subordinated to the army ones, or if they were. USAAF was a branch of the US Army, so the problem wasn't there the way it was post the 1949 Key West agreement and the creation of the USAF.

zak822

It's called bureaucratic caution.

A CIA sponsored operation, probably using their operational forces (but maybe borrowing SEALs) turns into a Pentagon-run operation.

Pretty soon each layer as the plan moves up the bureaucracy is adding Search and Rescue and other 'covering forces' and getting 'their guys' in on the mission. No one wants another Black Hawk Down, on their watch.

Apparently the British and Australian SAS, were appalled at the American tendency to overload missions, during the first few months of the Afghan war-- the typical SAS unit is 4 men.

The same problem bedeviled plans to grab bin Ladin under Clinton (read Steve Coll's excellent book 'Ghost Wars').

The generals and Joint Chiefs resisted Clintons desire to act with special ops. However, according to Richard Clark, the fellows down the line were told that it was Clinton nixing things.

Also, you will recall that Reagan did not listen to his military advisors; he allowed politics to trump military wisdom. The Joint Chiefs were unanimously against putting Marines in Lebanon, but Reagan did it anyway. Did not work out too well. As he turned tail to run, he gratuitously allowed long-range artillery fire upon various positions. Heard that pissed off Bin Laden and others.

little ole jim from red country

The US got trapped into appearing to be on the Maronite (Christian)/ Israeli side in the Lebanon War (remember this was the war where originally the Israelis were welcomed as the liberators of the Shia in south Lebanon, from the PLO).

The Maronites have always operated with their own agenda and they neatly manouevred the US into it.

It's all part of a long history of the US not really understanding what it is doing in the Muddle East, and p-ing people off generally.

[url=http://dotties-weight-loss.geboook.com/]GuruPost[/url]
The Site is excellent! Great job
GuruPost