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Why is WYSP morning man Danny Bonaduce drinking again? Not a reaction to his recent ratings, which were up. (September was his best month among men 18-49.) As a panelist on Joy Behar's show on HLN (formerly Headline News), Bonaduce blamed remarks by syndicated talker Glenn Beck's on the Fox News vs. White House feud for making him fall off the wagon.

Who is to blame for (1) our difficulties in Iraq, (2) the delayed Katrina response, (3) lousy relations between the US and Russia, and (4) Republicans losing the Senate?  Donald Rumsfeld, of course.  At least if you believe Robert Draper, as he writes in the June 2009 issue of GQ. "Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics -- his administration peers -- are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't...

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography. For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the...

The fight over national security increasingly threatens to drag the United States into a political civil war that could also fracture Barack Obama's political base. It is turning the President's own Democratic allies into potential enemies, while undermining his domestic priorities in health care and energy reform. Yesterday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich pointed all eyes to the website of Gentleman's Quarterly, which has posted a series of cover sheets to ultra-top-secret intelligence updates that former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to prepare daily for former president George W. Bush. It turns out that the cover sheets routinely showed...

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld routinely used militaristic passages from the Bible on the cover pages of White House intelligence documents, according to new revelations by GQ magazine. It said Rumsfeld displayed the passages over photographs of US forces in Iraq to curry favor with then president George W. Bush, despite concerns about the incendiary impact on the Islamic world if they were ever made public. One republished on the GQ website came from March 31, 2003, showing a US tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the United States invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam...

A series of cover sheets for intelligence reports written for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials during the early days of the war in Iraq in 2003 were adorned with biblical quotations, and appeared Sunday, six years later, on the Web site of GQ magazine. The daily briefings were called the “Worldwide Intelligence Update,” one of several intelligence reports compiled overnight and presented in a folder for Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials as they came to work. In the selection of the cover sheets that GQ placed on its Web site, photographs of soldiers praying...

These days, political memoirs come in three genres. First, the "everyone around me was an idiot or a crook, but I was a really smart good guy." Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's What Happened perfected the genre, assuring him the place in history previously occupied by Baron Munchausen. The second borrows a line from the great Toby Keith, converting "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" from lyric to prose. Former CIA director George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm will, for many a year, be foremost in that category. The last is...

Presidential campaigns are so much about posturing that it's easy to miss what's really going on. Take national security policy. John McCain and Barack Obama want you to think they represent diametrically opposed approaches to national security, when in fact they have quite similar views. And one of the things they have in common is that neither of them wants you to realize they see future security challenges pretty much the same way Donald Rumsfeld did. To prove that point, let's take a little stroll down memory lane. Nine years ago this month, presidential candidate George W. Bush gave the...

"The lack of an official endorsement from Rumsfeld most likely stems from the rift caused between the two over a statement McCain made in the past regarding Rumsfeld’s tenure in the White House. Rumsfeld, McCain declared, will "go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." An aide for Rumsfeld, Keith Urbahn, tells The Hill Rumsfeld no longer follows presidential elections. Instead he is focusing his energy on the Rumsfeld Foundation, an organization that encourages young people to participate in public service, and his memoirs. “Mr. Rumsfeld is a Republican,” however, Urbahn quickly points out....

May 10, 2008, 8:30 a.m. Warring HistoryRethinking the Iraq critics. By Michael Barone In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we’ve learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists only could guess at what was going on behind the scenes. Today we’re only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes in...

During his tenure as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld often likened the administration's foreign policy decisions to those of the Truman administration during the first years of the Cold War. As President George W. Bush makes his way to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with a stated agenda of advancing the goal of Palestinian statehood, it is worth examining president Truman's achievements and comparing them with those of President Bush. ...The Defense Department's decision last week to sack Stephen Coughlin, the only expert on Islamic law in the Pentagon's joint staff,...

Today the people of Venezuela face a constitutional referendum, which, if passed, could obliterate the few remaining vestiges of Venezuelan democracy. The world is saying little and doing less as President Hugo Chávez dismantles Venezuela's constitution, silences its independent media and confiscates private property. --snip--With diplomatic, economic and communications institutions designed for a different era, the free world has too few tools to help prevent Venezuela's once vibrant democracy from receding into dictatorship. But such a tragedy is not preordained. In fact, we face a moment when swift decisions by the United States and like-thinking nations could dramatically help, supporting...

Editor’s Note: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received the 2007 Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award in honor of Sir Winston S. Churchill on November 17, 2007, and delivered the following remarks (as released by the secretary, exclusively to National Review Online). This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging...

Marine Captain Duncan D. Hunter, who's running in next year's GOP primary to replace his father Duncan L. Hunter in Congress, has picked up some heavyweight financial support from none other than Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary forced from office after years of dismal news out of Iraq. Now working as a "business consultant" in Saint Michaels, Maryland, according to a campaign-disclosure filing, Rumsfeld gave the maximum $2300 contribution on September 30 to the younger Hunter, who is conducting a remote campaign from Afghanistan, where he is serving his third Middle East tour of duty. The elder Hunter was...

The private plane about to deliver Rummy and Mrs. Rummy to their getaway in Taos, New Mexico, is idling on the tarmac at Dulles when the Secretary arrives. He enters smiling, beaming, swaggering, a compact little 75-year-old package of waning testosterone, dressed in real-man-headed-to-his-ranch khaki, two dachshunds (names: Reggie and Chester) yapping at his loafers, classy, no-nonsense wife of fifty-two years Velcroed to his side. In other words, the perfect tableau of a Bush-administration official—except, of course, that he no longer is and has chosen this outing to talk at length for the first time since he was rudely banished...

Rumsfeld Calls Afghanistan 'Big Success' By RICHARD PYLE NEW YORK (AP) — In an interview billed as his first since leaving the top Pentagon post, Donald Rumsfeld calls Afghanistan "a big success," but says U.S. efforts in Iraq are hampered by the failure of Iraq's government to establish a foundation for democracy. "In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the streets," Rumsfeld says in the October issue of GQ magazine. While "that's been a big success," he said, the Baghdad regime "has not been able to...

Much of what you know about Donald Rumsfeld is wrong. I know, because I worked intimately with him for four years, from the summer of 2001 until I left the Pentagon in August 2005. Through countless meetings and private conversations, I came to learn his traits, frame of mind and principles ? characteristics wholly at odds with the standard public depiction of Rumsfeld, particularly now that he has stepped down after a long, turbulent tenure as defense secretary, a casualty of our toxic political climate. I want to set the record straight: Don Rumsfeld is not an ideologue. He did...

WASHINGTON --Under that famously self-confident exterior is a president who weeps - a lot. President Bush told the author of a new book on his presidency that "I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve" or show anything less than steadfastness in public, especially in a time of war. "I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me," he said. Yet, he said, "I do tears." "I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in...

Rumsfeld Is Setting Up a Foundation AP WASHINGTON (AP) - Now that he's out of government, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is setting up a foundation to attract others to public service. ''His whole focus is getting this foundation organized,'' said Lawrence Di Rita, once Rumsfeld's spokesman at the Pentagon and still authorized to speak for him. ''He's deep into that.'' While Rumsfeld did stints as an investment banker and pharmaceutical executive, the 75-year-old Republican spent most of his life in public service, including two separate tours as defense secretary, four terms representing Illinois in the House of Representatives...

TAOS— This small mountain town is known for leaving its celebrities alone. That's why Julia Roberts can shop for yarn at La Lana Wools and Anthony Hopkins (aka Hannibal Lecter) can thumb through the pages at Brodsky Bookshop undisturbed. But Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense? That's a different story. While living in Taos, Rumsfeld has suffered a number of public indignities, from being burned in effigy to being refused a hot chocolate by a bartender. But last week's description of a verbal fracas aimed at Rumsfeld by writer Jeff Conant, posted on an Internet political newsletter at www.counterpunch.org, may...

The commander in chief and the U.S. armed forces joined to bid farewell yesterday to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with a precision-timed 60 minutes of laudatory speeches, honor guard spit and polish and patriotic music... The record of Don Rumsfeld's tenure is clear," Mr. Bush said. "There has been more profound change at the Department of Defense over the past six years than at any time since the department's creation in the late 1940s. And these changes were not easy." It was the president who ended Mr. Rumsfeld's six-year tenure prematurely over the bogged-down war in Iraq. Mr. Bush,...

I would like to say I am sorry for the recent remarks I have made concerning President Bush. I was immature and have not responded well to the recent election. I was especially upset when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld resigned the day after the election. I still think it could have been handled better. However, when I watched his Townhall meeting last Friday with the Pentagon troops, I came to some conclusions. Rummy did not appear or sound bitter. I realized this man has been around the Washington scene for so long, he knows how the game is played. There...

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If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master; If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph...

(CBS) An American general caught up in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is now at the center of a new controversy involving allegations about her past, but she's calling it a smear campaign. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who claims she has been made a scapegoat for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, is the subject of an investigation by the Army Inspector General involving an alleged shoplifting incident in October of 2002, one year before the abuses began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. According to military sources, Karpinski was caught shoplifting a $22 bottle of perfume from a...

Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the former Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo By ADAM ZAGORIN Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and...

After returning from Iraq in 2003, I found myself preparing to leave active-duty in 2004. For some reason, I encountered several interesting articles about Donald Rumsfeld and came to be pretty impressed with the guy. I don't mean his leadership style, or his decisions or anything like that. I mean personality-wise. He's got a great bio: elected to the House of Representatives at age 29, worked his way through Washington for nearly two decades before departing for the private sector. There he turned around two companies that were failing, and by all accounts, he did so with panache. My boss...

Okay history fans, if Bush is to be compared to Lincoln then maybe he ought to do what the embattled Lincoln did to first War Secretary Simon Cameron in 1862 when his Congress was under fire: Accept Rumsfeld's resignation. Supposedly, the Don of the Pentagon offered it on two occasions, according to the source himself and it is apparent that a change in the tactics of fighting a losing war are now needed. Rumsfeld went against the advice of sound judgement from generals such as Shenseki and others who urged him to invade with at least as many boots on...

Should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be removed from his position, whether by resignation or dismissal? Yes, he has lost all credibility and the ability to lead and has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He must go. No, he has ably overseen wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while working on overhauling the armed forces. He should stay.

...who brings down two hostile, tyrannous regimes in one year, and while a long regional war — actually the first stage in a worldwide war declared by terrorists for the past 20 years — was grinding on also managed the most radical transformation of the American armed forces in sixty years? I call Donald Rumsfeld the best Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had. Close behind him, in my book, is Secretary Richard Cheney, and we have been lucky to have a number of other very good Secretaries of Defense during the past century. No one has had as tough...

Bush says Expects Rumsfeld to Stay Defense Secretary For Rest Of His Presidency.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic senators will try to present a no-confidence measure on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the full Senate on Wednesday in an effort to persuade President Bush to sack the outspoken Pentagon chief, Democratic aides said. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California was the first to move publicly on the measure, which will be attached to a defense appropriation bill, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is expected to offer the proposal. Democrats in the House of Representatives are likely to offer a similar proposal, a senior Democratic aide said. The Senate's Republican leadership may prevent...

September 5, 2006 Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid 528 Hart SOB United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Reid: Thank you for your September 4 letter to the President. I am responding on his behalf. A useful discussion of what we need to do in Iraq requires an accurate and fair-minded description of our current policy: As the President has explained, our goal is an Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself. In order to achieve this goal, we are pursuing a strategy along three main tracks -- political, economic, and security. Along each of these...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reached out to Democrats, opening up the door for them to retract their stinging indictment of him as Pentagon chief. In a letter to Congress's top Democrats, Rumsfeld said recent remarks he made during a speech in Salt Lake City were misrepresented by the media, including by The Associated Press. Rumsfeld said he was "concerned" by the reaction of Democrats, many of whom called for his resignation and said he was treading on dangerous territory Democrats said Friday they stood by their remarks. "We did read the speech and he makes comparisons to World War...

SALT LAKE CITY — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush administration to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning Tuesday that the United States is confronting "a new type of fascism." Rumsfeld, speaking before the American Legion convention, delivered some of his most explicit and extended attacks yet on the administration's critics, provoking criticism from furious Democrats who accused him of "campaigning on fear." By comparing U.S. foreign policy with World War II and the Cold War, Rumsfeld sought to portray skeptics of Bush's foreign policy as being on the wrong side...

HAMPTON--U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, a Republican, hasn't ever agreed with Sen. Hillary Clinton on anything. But she is siding with the New York Democrat in calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. "I've made no bones about it the last two years," the 1st District congresswoman told members of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the American Society of Military Comptrollers. "He's probably a nice guy, but I don't think he's a great secretary of defense." Davis said she based her determination in part on Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq. She pointed to his 2003 firing of Gen....

A Lady libertarian wrote a lot of letters to the White House complaining about the treatment of a captive insurgent (terrorist) being held in GuantanamoBay. She received back the following reply: The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20016 Dear Concerned Citizen, Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay,Cuba. Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating...

Our twice victorious Rummy is being interviewed on Bob Bennett Morning In America radio right now.

The Foreign Secretary spoke his mind on the Middle East — and became a target in Washington WHEN JACK STRAW was replaced by Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary, it seemed an almost inexplicable event. Mr Straw had been very competent — experienced, serious, moderate and always well briefed. Margaret Beckett is embarrassingly inexperienced. I made inquiries in Washington and was told that Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Straw’s statement that it would be “nuts” to bomb Iran. The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will testify in an open hearing Thursday about the war in Iraq, reversing an earlier decision not to appear, a spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee told CNN Wednesday night. Rumsfeld had previously declined to appear because, he said, he was already scheduled for a closed door meeting with members of Congress on the same day.

The Pentagon has extended the tours of about 3,500 US troops in Iraq for 120 days in a move that dashed hopes of a reduction in the US force this year in the face of surging sectarian violence. The Pentagon also identified four other brigades with 25,000 troops for deployment to Iraq late this year and early next, enough to maintain the US force at about 130,000 troops for a year. "Additionally, the Secretary of Defence approved a request by the commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) to extend the deployment of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team operating in Iraq...

I saw this Reuters headline when I opened my home page this morning: Rumsfeld arrives in Afghanistan; 30 Taliban killed We don't need Rumsfeld as the Secretary of Defense. We need him to be our entire Defense Department! Well, him and a guy who flies him around the world to drop him off in the hotspots. President Bush could cut our taxes, balance the budget, and save money on SDI. We would just launch Rummy to intercept the missle! Bush could call him up..."Rummy, I need you to parachute into North Korea to take out Kim Jong Ill." Then, he...

The US missile defense system was put to its first real test Tuesday and Wednesday with North Korea's launch of a long-range missile and a half dozen shorter range missiles. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was on and off the phone with top US commanders almost continuously for days before the missile tests. "I received the notification of the launch of these missiles probably within of a minute of when they occurred," he told reporters before a meeting with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. Pentagon officials were circumspect, though, about how the multi-billion dollar missile defense system performed. "What...

THE Pentagon is considering new rules on military interrogations that treat "war on terror" detainees differently from prisoners protected by the Geneva Conventions, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today. Mr Rumsfeld said debate over unresolved "definitional issues" have held up final approval of a new army field manual on intelligence interrogations for weeks. "There is a debate over the difference between a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention and an unlawful combatant in a situation that is different from the situation envisioned by the Geneva Convention," he said. "And those issues are being wrestled with at the present...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has again refused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to terrorism suspects held in secret detention centres, the humanitarian agency said on Friday. The overnight statement was issued after talks in Washington between ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger and senior officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. "Mr. Kellenberger deplored the fact that the U.S. authorities had not moved closer to granting the ICRC access to persons held in undisclosed locations," the Geneva-based agency said.

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

The tabloids have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie -- or "Brangelina," as the couple is called -- to fret about. But Washington has the relationship between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld -- "Donoleezza" -- to worry about. The two seemed to be on the outs of late, particularly when it came to Iraq policy.

Friday, May 05, 2006 Rummy "lied" Andrew Sullivan says the man who heckled Rummy was Not some crazed lefty. The man who demanded that Rumsfeld answer the questions we all want to have answered turns out to be the man who gave former president George H. W. Bush his daily intelligence briefing. And he was right in the exchange; and Rummy was factually wrong. Yep: Rumsfeld lied. Quelle surprise. No not some crazed lefty. The man was Ray McGovern, who Sweetness and Light noticed was part of Daniel Ellsberg's Truth Telling Project. Here's the relevant blog entry from the Belmont...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

ATLANTA - Anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday, and one of them, a former CIA analyst, accused him in a question-and-answer session of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence.