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Donald Rumsfeld's secret plan to defeat Saddam relies on special forces, a new high-tech weapon and a defense secretary involved in every detailDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld speaks to the media in front of a B-2 stealth bomber Nearly every day now, working from the stand-up desk in his spacious Pentagon E-Ring office, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pores over a secret document known only to a tight circle of U.S. officials: Deployment Order No. 177. Although it might sound like a one-pager that needs only a quick review, No. 177 is a series of documents, each 10 to 20 pages...

DOBBS: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is warning of the threat of terrorists entering this country through the same routes as those used by illegal aliens. Secretary Rumsfeld, traveling in South America, warned that enemies look for weaknesses and take advantage of them. DONALD RUMSFELD: The risk is that some of these human-smuggling routes into our country from this hemisphere could be used just as easily for terrorists. ~snip~ REP. JOHN HOSTETTLER (R-IN), CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND BORDER SECURITY: : Well, the House will not be taking up in a positive sense guest worker legislation. We know that this is...

... "We were never close. He was kind of 'to the manor born' and I wasn't," he said, adding that he also questioned the motivation and timing of the criticism. "I didn't think it was complimentary of his son, George W. Bush, and I didn't think it was very helpful to his other son, who's running for president, so I thought it was a strange thing for him to be doing," Rumsfeld said, who also took a stab at why Jeb Bush's campaign had failed to catch fire. "I suppose there are some people that are uncomfortable with a dynasty,"...

One of the benefits of being 91 is you don’t have to hold back anymore—you can say what you want. And in a new biography, former President George H.W. Bush tells Jon Meacham just what he thinks about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s work in his son’s administration, as reported by Fox News and The New York Times. “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” the elder Bush said of the man who served as his secretary of defense. “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President George H.W. Bush takes some unexpected swipes at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, key members of his son’s administration, over their reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, in a new biography of the 41st president, Fox News reported on Wednesday. In “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush,” author Jon Meacham quotes Bush as saying that Cheney and Rumsfeld were too hawkish and that their harsh stance damaged the reputation of the United States, the cable news network said. Speaking of Cheney, who was vice president under President George W. Bush,...

Donald Rumsfeld, one of the leading architects of the Iraq war, reportedly said in a recent interview that then-President George W. Bush was "unrealistic" to pursue democracy in the country. Rumsfeld, who served as Bush's defense secretary from 2001 to 2006, allegedly made the comments in an interview with the Times of London. "I'm not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories," Rumsfeld is quoted as saying. "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when...

Donald Rumsfeld, one of the leading architects of the Iraq war, said in a recent interview that then-President George W. Bush was "unrealistic" to pursue democracy in the country. *snip * "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words."

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from 2002 to 2005. IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The former top aide to then-secretary of state Colin Powell has reportedly emerged as an increasingly high-profile and vocal critic of US administration policy at home and abroad. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief-of-staff, "says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realized ... had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after September 11, 2001," the New York Times reported. "What I saw was a cabal...

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Israel Hayom that the American administration's negative focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit is an "unfortunate distraction" from the important issue -- the Iranian threat. Less than a week before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Israel Hayom that the focus on Netanyahu's visit rather than on his message is an "unfortunate distraction" from the important issue -- the Iranian threat. "I find it stunning to see the comments out of the White House on this issue,"...

by Mark Finkelstein January 3, 2006 - 07:58 Katie Couric's just-completed interview with NY Times Reporter James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story and is now publishing his book on the matter, 'State of War,' offered a treasure-trove of insights into the matter. And give Katie a gentlelady's 'C' for her questioning. Couric earned the bulk of her credit by posing this seminal line of questioning: "Did [the leakers] have any sympathy or understanding about this new climate this country finds itself in and the criticism the Bush administration took prior to 9/11 for not putting the pieces together...

My high school physics teacher used to tell us that in order to understand physics you first had to be curious.   His First Directive was “wonder about things.”  I bring this up only because it is a source of constant amazement to me how uncurious everyone around Big White is - and by “everyone”  I do mean EVERYWON. They receive a lot of information in their newsfeed that they tweet, text and Instagram on to others, along with an original witticism when the spirit moves them. If the “news” comes from a trusted source, i.e. somebody in their Twittersphere, they...

Tragically, all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing. - Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit,” 6/13/2014 All we fought for in Iraq. All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp of vanishing. That’s what Mitt Romney says. We fought for. We fought for. We. Oh, so it’s we now, is it, Mitt? We. I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We. The guy who helped set up “pro-draft” rallies and yet somehow managed to avoid service in Vietnam is...

Reader responses to my column about this year's commencement follies ranged widely, as always. But there were nonetheless certain patterns. The most common one was this: indifference about Brandeis dumping Ayaan Hirsi Ali, irritation at protesters for persuading Christine Lagarde to back out of speaking at Smith, and lots of support for those who got Condoleezza Rice to cancel her appearance at the Rutgers graduation ceremony. Why were many readers cheered by the outcome in Condi's case but not the others? Because she's a "war criminal." To which my response is: No, she isn't. I say this to the legion...

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld filed his taxes on Tuesday with an added twist: a letter telling the IRS that he had no idea whether his return was, in fact, accurate. “Despite the fact that I am a college graduate and I try hard to make sure our tax returns are accurate...I know that I do not know whether or not my tax returns are accurate, which is a sad commentary on governance in our nation's capital," Rumsfeld's letter reads.The letter’s phrasing appears to allude to Rumsfeld’s famous “unknown unknowns” statement in 2002, when he said, in reference to...

Donald Rumsfeld: 'It does not take a genius' By: Tal Kopan March 25, 2014 06:13 AM EDT Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is blasting the Obama administration’s handling of Afghanistan, saying a “trained ape” could have done a better job in diplomatic relations with the country. “We have status of forces agreements probably with 100, 125 countries in the world,” Rumsfeld said Monday night on “On the Record with Greta van Susteren” on Fox News. “This administration, the White House and the State Department, have failed to get a status of forces agreement. A trained ape could get a status...

(CNSNews.com) - Donald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush, blames poor diplomacy by the Obama administration for the current strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai."Our relationship with Karzai and with Afghanistan was absolutely first-rate in the Bush administration," Rumsfeld told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Monday. "It has gone down hill like a toboggan ever since the Obama administration came in."

Donald Rumsfeld, a man who doesn’t mince his words, placed the blame for the Benghazi disaster squarely on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview posted by Breitbart TV on Thursday. ~excerpt~ http://blog.heritage.org/2014/02/15/rumsfeld-clinton-responsible-lack-protection-benghazi/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

When I was in high school, one of my part-time jobs was driving a hotel van to and from the airport for the Howard Johnson in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb just north of Chicago. It was a great job. I got to know a ton of different types of people. To this day, it’s the second favorite job I ever had. One type of person that I got to know driving to and from O’Hare International Airport were pharmaceutical sales reps from a company, also headquartered in Skokie, called Searle Pharmaceutical. Searle, like a lot of companies in the...

Donald Rumsfeld on Obama: ‘I Begin with Incompetence as a Problem’ Talking to journalist David Samuels about his Kindle Singles interview with the former secretary of defense. Lee Smith October 4, 2013 7:31 AM David Samuels’ deeply reported oddball narratives and profiles have appeared on the covers of Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and other magazines. Samuels has also contributed two long interviews for Amazon’s new Kindle Singles series: The first with Israeli President Simon Peres, and his most recent with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (available here, and Rumsfeld has also just published a new book, Rumsfeld's...