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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...

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...

The story of yesterday's parliamentary vote in Kyrgyzstan to annul the lease of the U.S. air base there included an intriguing subplot: the presence of ex-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Bishkek. Officially, he was there on the business of the Rumsfeld Foundation, a group that offers short-term fellowships to young scholars from Central Asia and the Caucasus to study in Washington, D.C. And the timing of the visit, at the same time as the parliamentary vote, was just a coincidence. But as anyone following Central Asian politics knows, there is no such thing as coincidence. And the Kyrgyzstan...

<p>Unearthed by James Carter IV (of the "President Carter" Carters and the 47 percent video) and first shared by Talking Points Memo is this bit of video amazement. In it, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under Bush, jokingly suggests that he "can't tell" if maybe President Obama now wants the terrorists to win the War on Terror.</p>

The Talk Shows May 19th, 2013 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Pfeiffer, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Rep. David Camp, R-Mich.; Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.; former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Pfeiffer, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas; Sen. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt.THIS WEEK (ABC): Pfeiffer; Sen. Robert Menendez, D- N.J.; Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio; Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Pfeiffer, Sen. Rand...

SEOUL - South Korean security authorities were ready to carry out on-board inspections of a Bahama-registered freighter after being tipped off that the ship might carry some members of Al-Qaeda, police said on Thursday. The 17,000-tonne freighter, the Athenia, which was suspected of carrying members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group, was due to arrive at the southwestern port of Kunsan late Thursday, the police said. “We have been informed that Al Qaeda members might be hiding in the ship,” a police officer in charge of foreign affairs in Kunsan Police station told AFP. “When the ship reaches the...

The guerrilla legal campaign against national security suffered a big defeat this week, and the good news deserves more attention. The victory for legal sanity came Monday when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to toss out a suit brought by aspiring terrorist Jose Padilla against a slew of Bush Administration officials. Readers may remember that Padilla was arrested in 2002 for plotting to set off a dirty bomb on U.S. soil. He was detained as an enemy combatant, convicted in a Miami court and sentenced to 17 years in prison. But Padilla has been...

During this heated discussion Alan Colmes says, and has been saying for years, that Enhanced Interregation Techniques (EIT) yield nothing. He also states that Donald Rumsfeld confirms this. An hour later on Hannity, Rumsfeld says that just is not true.

Tsk Tsk. Sad

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is intervening with a Pentagon investigator to influence the final wording of a report that exonerates George W. Bush-era officials who gave war briefings to retired military TV and radio commentators. Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, has tried for three years to convince federal investigators that the briefing program violated government rules and that some of the retired officers turned analysts received preferential treatment for Pentagon contracts. Two previous government probes found no misconduct, and the Pentagon inspector general now has wrapped up a third investigation. A source close to the third...

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, former gang member, and designated enemy combatant who was sentenced to 17 years in prison, is mounting an aggressive appeal. The oral arguments on October 26 in Richmond’s Fourth Circuit will strike at the heart of the Constitution. Padilla brought a lawsuit against former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials, alleging he was illegally detained and tortured in the military brig after his 2002 arrest. That suit, which has been described as “lawfare” or exacting personal and financial “flesh” from an opponent, was dismissed last February by a federal judge in Charleston,...

In an explosive interview with Al Jazeera’s English Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blasted the journalist for “haranguing” and refused to answer his questions — accusing Foukara of having it in his “being” to be “disrespectful.” The heated exchange erupted when the topic came to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Foukara asked Rumsfeld whether he felt responsible for the deaths of “innocent Iraqis” because, according to Foukara, the Bush administration “didn’t secure the borders” of the country and sent in too few troops.

Herman Cain will add a heavyweight to his campaign staff on Monday. Taking over as campaign spokesman will be J.D. Gordon, who served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005-2009 under Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. Gordon is a retired Navy commander. He succeeds Ellen Carmichael, a 2009 graduate of Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. So how did CNN report this story? From CNN: “Herman Cain communications director resigns.” No mention was made of J.D. Gordon, at all. Reporter Shannon Travis made it sound as if Team Cain was on the rocks: “It’s a very amicable departure,” Carmichael...

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says President Barack Obama has come to accept much of the Bush Doctrine out of necessity, despite what he campaigned on in 2008. Rumsfeld said that Obama needed to keep the Guantanamo Bay detention center open because of national security concerns, and it was the best solution among a host of bad options. “They ended up keeping Guantanamo open not because they like it — we didn’t like it either — but they couldn’t think of a better solution,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday. Rumsfeld then listed a handful of other...

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...

SPIEGEL: Mister Secretary, you are famous for your "Rumsfeld rules." Do you happen to have a rule that gives advice on foreign invasions? Rumsfeld: I do. When you begin an invasion, a rule is "the mission should determine the coalition, not the other way around." You should not first assemble a coalition with many different views and then try to determine the mission. That leads to a lack of clarity as to the mission. SPIEGEL: Is that the case with the current NATO invasion in Libya? Rumsfeld: I think you can make that case. The United States did not articulate,...

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...

The Justice Department under President Barack Obama has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and administration officials - including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aide Paul Wolfowitz - in a lawsuit by Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla, who spent years behind bars without charges in conditions his lawyers compare to torture. Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that the government has agreed to retain private lawyers for the officials, at a cost of up to $200 per hour. Miller said “conflicts concerns” prompted the decision. He did not elaborate. One private...