Don Rumsfeld - Navy aviator, 1954-57 (between Korean and Vietnam wars)
Yeah, yoe!
Posted on 12/18/2004 4:40:13 AM PST by johnny7
WASHINGTON - President Bush and the Senate's top two Republicans voiced support for Donald Rumsfeld on Friday as allies of the defense secretary sought to outflank increasingly vocal GOP critics in and out of Congress. "Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job leading our efforts at the Department of Defense to win the war on terrorism and to help bring about a free and peaceful Iraq," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Friday. "And he's instrumental in our efforts during this time of war we are in."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., issued a statement saying that he, too, is "confident that Secretary Rumsfeld is fully capable of leading the Department of Defense and our military forces to victory in Iraq and the war on terror." And Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP whip, said Rumsfeld "is an excellent secretary of defense, and we are fortunate to have a man of his courage and vision serving the president at this critical time." Rumsfeld's supporters spoke out after several days of GOP criticism aimed at the man who has steered the Pentagon during the Iraq war and its messy aftermath. More than 1,300 American troops have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in 2003. None of Rumsfeld's congressional GOP critics has called for his ouster.
Still, they have grown increasingly outspoken in recent days, less than two weeks after the White House disclosed that the president wanted the defense secretary to remain in his post into a second term. The increased criticism from Republicans also comes after Rumsfeld's encounter with troops in Kuwait who complained about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment. "I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld," said Sen. Trent Lott in remarks to the Biloxi, Miss., Chamber of Commerce this week. "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."
The Mississippi Republican said Bush should make a change at the Pentagon in the next year or so. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, released a letter to Rumsfeld asking why the Army had not moved more aggressively to produce fully armored Humvees for the troops in Iraq -- an issue she said she had raised at a hearing nine months ago. "I don't like the way he has done some things. I think they have been irresponsible," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. The Vietnam veteran's list of criticisms was long: "We didn't go into Iraq with enough troops. He's dismissed his general officers. He's dismissed all outside influence. He's dismissed outside counsel and advice."
Oh they'll come off.
They won't mean squat.
OOps, sorry.
Allow me to correct myself.
They will enable us to declare victory again and get out of that hellhole.
So this was a rush to war according to you. A 'political warfare'. Well, how about going over the history in regards to Iraq and the problems that extended beyond the Gulf War with that madman still in power. Take the fact he signed agreements regarding dismantling and discontinuing WMD, he signed agreements for full inspections. Now, take into account he spent yrs. and yrs. shooting at our jets protecting the no-fly zones. He spent the decade deceiving and defying UN weapons inspectors, often getting caught violating terms. The weapons inspectors were taken out in '98. Saddam Hussein spent the decade giving speeches calling for the destruction of the USA and Israel. He attempted to have Bush 41 assasinated. And 9/11 happens and Iraq cheers and praises it. Take into account 9/11 was a wake up call that these terrorists want to destroy us in any way they can. Take into account Saddam shares their desire to destroy us. It's the Middle East and they rally around their Arab brethen against the USA. It needed to be dealt with. Were we supposed to just keep those troops on the border indefinately? And, even with the troops, Iraq wasn't following through with complete inspections. Iraq needed to be dealt with. It's a shame you just don't get that it involves more than Afghanistan with this war on terrorism.
Don Rumsfeld - Navy aviator, 1954-57 (between Korean and Vietnam wars)
Yeah, yoe!
And how about capturing UBL? Who's responsible for that, if not Rumsfeld and/or Rice? Saddam's a booby prize.
See if that sells to the troops in Mosul.
What is the correct amount of time that it should take to capture OBL? What do you base your answer on? What specifically did Rummy do or did not do?
Your point is the most sensible I have read. It is easy to Monday morning quarterback from the tv, than be on the playing field. I have to presume people have forgotten about the losses we suffered in WW2, Korea and Viet Nam they far exceed the numbers lost in Iraq. Our military fought with what they had and won. I will add they loss of any military member is sad and it hurts us all. I was wondering where was the outcry when, Les(Than) Aspin F'd our military over in Somalia by failing to send requested heavy armor/tanks? Klintoon/Aspin lied by the wayside and good men died.(A General took the fall) Rummy is a good man, who will persevere in this matter. Our troops will receive the armored vehicles needed. For those that it applies, Show me a better replacement for Donald Rumsfield. The msm is using some of our naive military members as pawns to attack this administration in the war on terror. I wonder what would have happened to the soldier if he had asked the same question during the klintoon administration? I would say that he would have kept his mouth shut from fear of reprisals. Note the msm would have never dared tarnish herr klintoon's (secretary of undefense) Nuff Said!
Thanks for the full quote and has anybody else on this thread seen the thread about how this guy's Humvees were uparmored THE NEXT DAY!??
They were scheduled to be uparmored; it's just the reporter and his agenda got the Reservist to ask the question without knowing the full facts.
I will not get into any arguments with those on this thread about Rummy until the statistics about what Clinton did to the Military and the DoD community in 8 years is posted here. I was hoping it was on Rumbaugh's website since he cited them yesterday, that Rumsfeld inherited a skeleton Military from Clinton, but can't get his (Rush's) webpage to load on my low-memory PC, so gave up.
But - the fact still is, in Clinton's 8 years, he decimated the Military, had cut the Defense budget by 28% and IIRC, removed 273 ships from the Navy.
For those who think that Rumsfeld can build the Military back up overnight, I'd like to remind them that it takes 2 years to train the folks in a 10,000-person division to be cohesive and ready for battle. Not to mention that that can only be done when you have Congress passing the funding that is necessary to do that, not to mention the all-volunteer Military and inducing those numbers to join up.
When you take the time to investigate what Clinton did, and how much Rumsfeld has not only recouped but transformed, the Military, you have a very different opinion of SecDef Rumsfeld than a preponderence of the negative posters on this thread.
One final fact. It now takes 2-1/2 years to get a simple Secret clearance, thanks to Slick Willy. It used to take less than 6 months. No one has any idea how long it takes to get a Top Secret but it's ugly and way longer than 2-1/2 years. If the system weren't already bogged down, it got dropped to its knees when Sec. Ridge put in for 20,000 Secret clearances for the DHS folks. There are numerous FBI employees (also CIA and NSA, and DIA and ....you get the picture) waiting for clearances. And yes, they've been waiting TWO AND A HALF YEARS.
No wonder that the only people getting clearances (because you can't work on classified information without the clearance, meaning that you sit around and do pretty much nothing) is the Military. As soon as they are granted the clearance, they are lured away to DoD companies who are desperate for the clearance and maybe some of the knowledge of what the Soldier/Marine/Airman/Coastie did while in the Service. It beats me why this hasn't been changed - but it's most likely again something that falls at the feet of the Congress Critters who just haven't bothered to change what Clinton wrought.
There are so many reasons to dislike Clinton. He singlehandedly dismantled our Military and people like Hagel, McCainiac, Warner and others, stood by and did nothing and they were on the Armed Services Committees that "should" have known better and not let it happen.
Between Clinton and Capitol Hill, I'm disgusted with their critique of Rumsfeld when THEY were responsible for not doing anything when Clinton took the machete through the budget and the Military, and now are taking vicious swipes at Rumsfeld.
See if that sells to the troops in Mosul.
With full context pasted in it would.
Why did you leave it out?
Lott can do his childish "pay back time" another way, not on the backs of our troops when they are at war, thank you very much. Lott needs to grow a set and grow up.
The president had to stay out of the politics of that moment as he has had to so many times since then on other occassions that were simular.
If you can't see this is the Presidents style by now in these kinds of situations (even when it is his own reputation on the line, like in the Guard records, etc) then I don't know how to help you. He lets things like what happened to Sen. Lott and himself calm down and die a natural death. Sen. Lott needs to grow up! If this is truly retribution by Lott, then he needed to go a long time ago! We can do without childish selfish behavior like this in our nations capitol.
Thank "God" we have mature leaders like President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfield running this nation and war.
People need to know the stats on how many Humvee's were armored when we went in, and how many are armored now. It's significant! (I believe there were only a couple hundred armored when we went in, and now almost 90 percent are armored. I had the stats at one time, but can't find them right now. But it IS significant!)
We've adapted to/for the situation. As we've done for every war. Which is why we are the nation we are.
This administration has done an outstanding job, as have our troops. For "some" God forbid you say anything positive. How sad.. how sad for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, and will. How sad for those who left behind a part of them, or were injured.
Ignorance is alive and well in America when people don't know how well things are going. When they can't see the glass is more than half full, but rather only see doom and gloom. Some people thrive on negatives. Thank God our troops don't think like those people do! We wouldn't have the low casualty rate that we do in Iraq and Afghanistan if they did. H*ll, we wouldn't WIN anything with that kind of mindset!!!
Compare these wars to any war in history. Compare the number of people liberated, the years it took to accomplish the mission, and the numbers of casualties. We accomplished this in record time, with good stats.
We mourn the loss of every life lost, of every troop injured. But when this is over, it will have been worth it. Because our children and generations to follow will live in a safer world.
We only have to look at the world we live in today and imagine a life with Hitler still in it to know that those who sacrificed before us died a noble death.
We are eternally grateful to them.
"Rummy has done some good things but they don't balance out his complete lack of comprehension on how to run this war. He was the responsible party for the decision to disband the Iraqi Army....." ~ USMCVet
Are you reeeeeally that ignorant of the facts, or just playing dumb in hopes of advancing your agenda with the uninformed dupes????
I videotaped Newt Gingrich who was just on Fox a few minutes ago with Tony Snow. He backed up what I am posting here below.
In the interview O'Reilly did with him Monday night, 11-29-2004, which I videotaped, Richard Perle said this: "Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA - not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
BTW, the only reason Powell has a 77% "approval rating" when the clueless are polled is because he is a darling of the mainstream media where they get their "news" and they have rarely seen anything negative written or said about him.
He has no such "approval rating" among the informed.
Here is a link to the thread I posted on FR back on May 1, 2004:
Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation
National Review Online ^ | April 30, 2004 | Barbara Lerner
Posted on 05/01/2004 3:36:35 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127955/posts
"... First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. .." [snip] Click above link to read article.
Perle: Rumsfeld Opposed, Powell Wanted Occupation
Newsmax Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004
Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA - not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, says Richard Perle, the former chairman of Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board.
Appearing on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" Monday night, Perle said the U.S. made a most serious mistake after Iraq was liberated and the "keys" were not handed over immediately to Iraqis to run their own country.
Thus, the U.S. military became an occupying force - and an increasibly unpopular one.
"We didn't hand the keys over to the Iraqis. Instead we embarked on what became an extended occupation. That was fundamentally mistaken - it was politically driven," Perle said.
Perle's remarks places significant distance between postwar policies and neo-conservatives like himself who have backed the war and have been championed in the Bush administration by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney.
Perle told O'Reilly the idea of a military occupation was not the Pentagon's original plan.
"It was not Don Rumsfeld's decision," he said.
Asked by O'Reilly if handing the keys over to the Iraqis after deposing Saddam would have sparked a civil war between the Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, Perle said he didn't think so. He noted that there were already groups of anti-Saddam Iraqis in place when the dictator fell.
"There was an umbrella group of opposition figures. It included Shia, Sunnis, Kurds and in the end, of course, we did turn to the Iraqis. We asked them to form a governing council, then an interim government, but we made the big mistake of not trusting the Iraqis.
"I'm not saying that everything would have worked out, but everything certainly didn't work out the way we did it. My own view is we should have supported a government in exile even before going into Iraq."
O'Reilly asked how much responsibility Rumsfeld bears for the current situation in Iraq.
"I think the conduct of the war was brilliant," Perle observed. "The campaign will go down in history as one of the greatest military campaigns ever. Saddam was removed and his regime fell within three weeks.
"The problems didn't start immediately after Saddam's removal. The problems started when the occupation began to wear on the people, and that was predictable."
When O'Reilly cited Colin Powell as a dissenting voice who warned the president that if "you break it [Iraq], you'll own it," Perle said, "the irony is that it was Secretary Powell and some others who wanted the extended occupation. They are the ones who did not want to turn things over to the Iraqis, who feared and distrusted the Iraqis and blocked all efforts to do precisely that."
Perle then revealed that even before the war Rumsfeld's Department of Defense had argued that we should train thousands of Iraqis "to go in with us so that we wouldn't be the aggressor, we wouldn't be the occupying power, and those proposals were blocked largely by the State Department and the CIA. Rumsfeld was never able to get approval for the political strategy that might well have saved us from much of the subsequent trouble."
Responding to O'Reilly's remark that the we are now seen as the "bad guys," Perle said that the situation in Iraq can be cleaned up.
"Remember, we were portrayed as the bad guys when the only policy for dealing with Saddam were sanctions and the argument was that Iraqi babies were dying as result of the sanctions. We're making real progress and the political evolution is critical. There is a desperate effort now to cope with the fact that after these elections the Iraqis will be fully invested in their own future, and I think we've already begun to turn the corner."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/30/80903.shtml
Here is Rumsfeld's actual, unedited response to the question:
"I talked to the general coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they're being -- the Army is -- I think it's something like four hundred a month are being done, and it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that it would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip."
The press deliberately misreported Rumsfeld's comments in order to make his response, and him, look totally different from what was actually said. From my count, the first "you" in "you go to war with the army you have" is the 86th word in in the answer. It is in the sixth sentence. And "you go to war with the army you have" is not even the start of the sixth sentence.
This was a Michael Moore class of editing job.
Never, ever believe a thing from the mainstream media. Always assume it has been cut and edited into something to push their particular agenda, because chances are, it has.
9-10 months ago or so the nyt featured on the front page a picture of rumsfeld inside a military plane.
i understood then that the dems were targeting rumsfeld.
USMCVet, I am a retired Army vet and I would like to know who you voted for in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004? I would have to say no disrespect intended, but show me better President or Secretary of Defense. I know your time at the Pentagon was no picnic and that is why I opted not to go there. To be fair about my voting record, 1992(Pres.Bush) 1996(Bob Dole)2000(W) and 2004(W) I served in the Infantry in Nam lost some good friends, (we were soldiers) and proud to fight for our country. Do you feel the same? (NSNR)
Not arguin with you dwilli, but I'd put it this way ... war planners: Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney (in that order) ... listener: GWB.
Just heard Chris Wallace will be discussing (?) the Rumsfeld issue. I don't dare watch it .. I can't afford a new TV.
Okay, I admit I got fed up with all the naysayers on this thread and wrote what I did before I got to your post. Thank you for posting the quote about the vehicles being uparmored the next day.
But my comments about the vocal Congress Critters denouncing Rumsfeld who are themselves responsible for not funding a better Military during Clinton's 8-year decimation of the Military are still valid.
Before you declare that Rumsfeld was arrogant and uncaring you're damn right you have to see what he said in full.
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