Free Republic

No one is immune to the probing hands of the TSA ... including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ... who got the pat-down at Chicago's O'Hare airport this afternoon ... and TMZ has the pics. (Photo at link) Sources at the airport tell TMZ ... Rummy was all smiles during the body sweep and was "very nice" throughout the procedure.

Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. special operations forces is a major success in our country’s war against al-Qaeda. As a result of the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program and the intelligence gained from detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a major fraction of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been captured or killed since 2001.

There's no love lost between former colleagues Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. In a question and answer session for the New York Times Magazine, former Secretary of State Rice is breaking her silence about the criticisms former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made about her in his new book, "Known and Unknown." Rice was asked to comment on Rumsfeld's assertion that she "almost never wanted" to dissent with President George W. Bush. She replied about Rumsfeld: "He doesn't know what he's talking about." "I don't think he was ever in the room with the president and me when I would follow the...

See interesting video HERE... VAN SUSTEREN: Well, it seemed so unbelievable at the time, and then just two years ago, not under -- not under your watch, but under the new administration in Scotland, releasing -- one of the killers of Pan Am 103 goes home, and he's embraced by Libya, a huge hero. He's still a hero now. And it's, like, the United States just -- on that particular incident, that we've looked the other way, and you know, we've done -- we almost rewarded him. RUMSFELD: There -- I mean, old phrase that, in fact, I talk about...

Rumsfeld blasts Obama's world image Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disputes the notion that President Barack Obama has made America more popular around the globe than it was under his former boss, President George W. Bush. Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" by host Candy Crowley whether the U.S. is looked at differently than under his tenure, Rumsfeld replied, “I don't think there's data that supports that.” "He has made a practice of trying to apologize for America," Rumsfeld said of Obama. "I personally am proud of America” Rumsfeld also downplayed Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. “He had not accomplished...

The US war effort in Iraq would have been a "disastrous defeat" if president George W. Bush had left Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the Defence Department, John McCain says. The former Republican presidential candidate hit back yesterday over unflattering comments made by Mr Rumsfeld in his new autobiography, Known and Unknown. Reviving a feud between the pair, Mr Rumsfeld describes Senator McCain in his book as "a man with a hair-trigger temper and a propensity to fashion and shift his positions to appeal to the media".

Long-awaited, from-the-hip memoir offers raw, unvarnished look at eight decades of history "If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much." So declares former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his news book 'KNOWN AND UNKNOWN'. In the book, which streets next week, Rumsfeld details his half-century career in and around the ring -- and West Wing. It is based not only on Rumsfeld's memory but also on hundreds of previously unreleased documents from throughout his career. Now only the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal: # Rumsfeld warned in 2001 of Afghan “swamp” and “not to make a career...

FOR THE WHOLE TRANSCRIPT GO HERE DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Pace Q: Mr. Secretary, two points. Why not call them prisoners of war? And you're indicating that that's just some legal debate, which is up there. Are you not concerned that this could come back and somehow haunt the United States in potential future treatment of American soldiers who are taken in whatever kind of conditions, so that some future entity could say to the U.S., "You didn't abide by the Geneva Convention on this. You didn't call them prisoners of war. Why should we?" Rumsfeld: ...

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, actor Rainn Wilson and ex-Playboy executive Christie Hefner are among the entering class in New Trier Township High School's alumni Hall of Honor awards. Among those not making the cut were actress Ann-Margaret and Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. The honorees were said to embody the Winnetka school's mission "to commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion and lives to the service of humanity."

Sen. John McCain, one of the strongest opponents of repealing the ban on allowing gay and lesbian service members from serving openly, said he is open to changing the law – just not now. At the outset of the first of two high-profile Senate hearings on repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law Thursday, McCain (R-Ariz.) said it “may be premature” to make a change at this time, as he questioned the quality of the Pentagon study that recommends the force would be amenable to repeal. McCain’s support is critical to the Obama administration’s hope to pass the legislation.

WASHINGTON, June 25, 2010 – America exists and prospers because members of the U.S. armed forces step forward and protect it, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today. "In a very real sense,” he said, “America is their gift to the future." Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, right, addresses the audience while former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld looks on during Rumsfeld's portrait unveiling ceremony at the Pentagon, June 25, 2010. DoD photo by Cherie Cullen  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “This country – which has treated me so well – exists and prospers because the members...

If there was any doubt that Donald Rumsfeld's book would be frank-and-candid narrative of what, in his telling, really happened, here are a few details about what promises to be a tell-all in the tradition of the Washington memoir. First, see above: The dust jacket depicts a fleece-wearing Rummy at his get-away in Taos, a signal that he's detached from the Beltway and has nothing to lose. Then there is the title, "Known and Unknown," a play on his famous formulation about "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns." That's shorthand for suggesting he's going to reveal more than a few...

In 2003, ex-sailor and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, said the following: As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know. Many in the mainstream press chuckled warmly upon hearing this. “What a typical, right-wing dolt!” they thought to themselves. Some said so out loud. For a brief while, it was enough to induce a laugh among our betters...

BUTTE — Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his wife have purchased a 940-acre ranch on the Big Hole River in Montana’s Madison County, his spokesman confirmed Thursday. “Mrs. (Joyce) Rumsfeld was born in Montana, she has relatives in the state and the Rumsfelds have always thought very well of the state,” spokesman Keith Urbahn told The Montana Standard Thursday. “They plan to spend some time out there to enjoy it.” The property south of Twin Bridges includes hayfields, wetlands and river frontage. Urbahn said the Rumsfelds have no plans to develop the property. “He enjoys outdoor sports, and...

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...

Started at 11 am ET.

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....