Adios [12-letter expletive deleted]

And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. The success of a Secretary of Defense is this: How fast do they fade into the footnotes of history, all but forgotten? Admit it - the SoD's you remember, you remember because they were horrible, like MacNamara or because they were recent, like William Cohen.

But you will never forget the name Donald Rumsfeld.

The curtain has fallen on the sad chapter of history known as the Rumsfeld Era at the Department of Defense. On his watch the armed services have suffered, the Guard and Reserve are breaking under the undue burden that has been placed upon them and the all-volunteer force that took thirty years to build in the wake of Viet Nam has been decimated in four short years.

He made his rounds, dropping in on the troops in Iraq a couple of days ago, and today there was the obligatory send-off at the Pentagon.

I am no fan of Gates. I've made that clear in past posts. But he is the SecDef until Bush is forced from office, either by time or fiat. A Gates Pentagon is a reality and I have to function in that framework. By that I mean remain hyper-vigilant and keep an eye on every bit of information that comes out of the Pentagon and look for patterns of omission. Gates is a facts-fixer. Hell, he is the original facts-fixer. But you don't need to take my word for it, George Schults says the same thing, and not much more diplomatically.

The biggest thing Gates has going for him? He isn't Rumsfeld, and that's a start at least.

War Criminal

It looks like Donald Rumsfeld will be passing up one of those top-dollar gigs with a defense contractor after he leaves the Secretary of Defense post in January. A job like that would require international travel, and Rumsfeld is mere days away from being indicted as a war criminal in a German court. If he leaves the United States, he could be arrested and prosecuted for his role in grevious human rights abuses that have occured on his watch and at times under his supervision.

Alberto Gonzalez and George Tenet also are facing these same charges, along with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

The case revolves around charges made by eleven Iraqi plaintiffs who were confined at Abu Ghraib prison and a high-level Saudi detainee who admitted to being an operative of al Qae'da after being tortured at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

The case is also bolstered by the testimony of Brig. General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Army officer who was in charge of all prison operations in Iraq at the time the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.

The charges are being filed in Germany because German law provides for "universal jurisdiction" which allows for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world.

In 2004 the German prosecutors nearly brought a narrower set of charges against Rumsfeld and other administration officials, but backed off when the United States offered assurances that the "situation was being dealt with."

With the passage of the Military Commissions Act on September 29 of this year, those officials are shielded from prosecution in the United States, no matter how grevious and clear-cut their wrongdoing.

RUMSFELD IS GONE

Rumsfeld has resigned. Well, it's about time. He has been an abject failure as Secretary of Defense. He has managed to most likely lose two wars. He has the blood of 3000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians on his hands. He is a disgrace, and his resignation is three years too late.

Quite frankly, I would like to see him in a dock at The Hague.

Yes-man and Director of Central Intelligence under Bush-41, Bob Gates, is Bush's choice to replace the departing Rumsfeld.

By the end of the day, perhaps we will hear that Cheney has requested Bush's resignation?

Update: Doc Larry has Rummy's exit interview

"Time for Rumsfeld to go"

I got my pixels on an advanced copy of the editorial that will run in Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times on Monday.

I wish to stress that these papers are not official military publications. The military Times publications are published in the civilian world with content tilted toward military personnel. There are only two official military papers. Individual bases publish local interest base papers, such as Contrails at McConnell AFB and The Desert Airman at Davis-Monthan - but they are far from beign in the same league. Stars & Stripes and Pacific Stars & Stripes are the official military publications.

That takes nothing away from the significance of the stance taken by the editorial board of Gannett (the publisher of the papers) as the official military papers, with officers as editors, could not, for obvious reasons take this step. Those officers in charge of the military publications are subordinate to the Secretary. The military Times papers are sold, not distributed. The prevailing mood among the troops is decidedly anti-Rumsfeld, or they would not take the step and risk alienating readers who pay for the priveledge.
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From Air Force Times Monday 06 November 2006

"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we're doing, are a few choice examples.

Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.

Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war's planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war."

Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on "critical" and has been sliding toward "chaos" for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.

But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.


For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don't show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.

Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.

And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.

Now, the president says he'll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake.

It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers' deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Worst. SecDef. Ever.

I get to hear some pretty good rants, especially when my brother is in town and he and my husband get together. Take them to a bar and give them a couple of beers and a pool table, and sit back and listen. Hoo boy. Did they tear Rummy a new asshole last weekend.

Quick - how many previous SecDefs' can you recall? I can come up with a couple that I recall because they were horrible - Robert MacNamara and Louis Johnson - and two from the Clinton administration - Les Aspen, because he passed away soon after leaving the post, and William Cohen because Bill Clinton tapped a Republican. There was another one, but without using Google, his name escapes me. The success of a Secretary of Defense is measured by how quickly he passes from memory and into the footnotes of history.

But who among us can honestly say that we will ever forget Rumsfeld? He has long since surpassed MacNamara in every area - he is more craven and more vitriolic and a bigger technocrat than MacNamara ever though about being. He has less thought for our troops and the mission he has asked them to complete.

I said it. Rummy is the worst SecDef in our history. Now I will back it up.

Rumsfeld has removed every bit of counterbalance in his way. Remember General Shinseki? The man who saw this Iraq fiasco coming, and was fired for saying so? The Pentagon climate is fetid, the atmosphere of command has been poisoned. He is great at bureaucratic knife-fights, but he is lousy at running Defense. His management style is authoritarian and rigid and those who come into his office to tell him news he does not want to hear learn quickly not to make that mistake again. Accountability is non-existant. Watch a press conference. He will answer the easy questions, usually with an insult or two. But ask him a tough question, and he shoves a uniformed officer in front of the mike and steps aside for a moment.

The Secretary of Defense is the civilian authority over evey man and woman in uniform, from the lowliest grunt to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the SecDef answers only to the president.

Leadership is supposed to mean that the leader has penultimate authority and uses it judiciously; for everything, good and bad, rests on the shoulders of the leader, the man in charge. This man in charge has some strange notions about how the military works. Instead of sober analysis, he decides on a course that will be taken and then those beneath him are charged with first justifying his decision, then executing it. Instead of listing to those professional soldiers at his avail, he surrounds himself with yes-men who know better yet disgrace their uniforms by backing his plays.

He wants to run the Department of Defense like a business. Except it is not a business. It is a branch of government. Rumsfeld stubbornly clings to failed hypotheses of war-fighting, even in the face of staggering evidence to the contrary. He cuts the brass out of the decision-making loop, and totally disses them. He doesn't just undermine, he accuses, abuses and belittles the professional military advice, but relentlessly keeps them out of the decision-making process.

Everything that goes right is due to him, everything that goes wrong is the fault of the troops or the officers who command them. That's no way to run a meritocracy, and that is exactly what the military is.

Rumsfeld is so keen on his new ideas to *make everything better* that he has frivolously ignored the tried-and-true, to our nations peril, to our indicidual peril and to the peril of the troops in uniform. This tunnelvision has caused him to lash out At any and all who dare offer another point of view.

Rumsfeld, like his boss, flatly refuses to accept this reality that they have created. And they do not intend to. Bush has told us that this will be the responsibility of the next administration and the next SecDef to find a way out of this clusterfuck.

Morality you say? What is that all about? Morality is an outdated concept and it has no place in a Rumsfeld DoD. All of these offenses add up to a shredding of the Honor Code, and that is the most important principle of a free country. The Honor Code is why a free country can remain free, without falling under the tyranny of it's military. The Honor Code is the most important construct of all, and should it fail, it could set off a chain of events that might easily destroy our nation.

For these reasons, and oh so many more, Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense this nation has ever seen.

No one will ever forget the name Donald Rumsfeld.

I am loath to even mention the Kerry debacle...

It really should be a non-issue, but it isn't. Still, I am not going to scream for the head of a decorated veteran for botching a joke that was clearly intended to be a swipe at the president and his top civilian military advisors. Instead, I think I will examine the record of this administration with regard to the troops and the war.

The Republicans are the party that ended full support of the Afghan War before that mission was completed. Now the Taliban is back and Afghanistan is a failed state.

The Republicans are the party that basically fabricated reasons for launching a war. The one we were fighting was just and justified. But they had to go into Iraq.

The Republicans are the party that rushed headlong into a war with such wild abandon that the troops went in without the appropriate vehicle or body armor.

The Republicans are the party of Rumsfeld, who threatened to fire the very next senior military official who brought up post-war planning. This is the short-sighted buffoon that the president just today claimed is doing a fine job and he wants him to remain in his job another two years.

The Republicans are the party that refused to send in enough troops to stablize the country in the post major conflict phase because Rumsfeld wanted to try out his theories regarding a "streamlined" force.

The Republicans are the party that has overextended the military and the National Guard, to the point that the various branches have had to resort to all sorts of measures that had never been used before. They have called up inactive reserves, instituted a back-door draft with stop-loss policies, and they have breached the promises made to those who serve. A date that a tour will end is a sacred thing. When this date means nothing, a sacred trust is violated.

The Republicans are the party that has lied, repeatedly and routinely, about the conditions in Iraq.

The Republicans are the party of the President that has already declared that we are there for as long as he is president and the next inhabitant of the oval will have to clean the mess up.

The Republicans are the party that has refused to do anything to increase the size of the armed forces because it would be politically unpopular.

The Republicans are the party that has refused to allow the coffins of the fallen to be photographed at Dover AFB as they make their final journey home.

The Republicans are the party that claims exclusive loyalty of the troops in uniform, yet the Army is short 3500 officers throughout the ranks, and the Army Reserves is short 11,000 Lieutenants and Captains. Prior to this administration, there were waiting lists for OCS in all of the branches. Now, no one is getting turned down who applies, and very few are washing out.

The Republicans are the party that has cut research and rehab funding for troops returning to civilian life after traumatic brain injuries suffered in combat.

The Republicans are the party that have increased Tri-Care deductibles and co-pays while reducing military benefits. (My husband is a retiree and we don't even bother. We have private insurance and use our Tri-Care as secondary.)

The Republicans are the party that have reduced retiree benefits on people like my husband who never flinched once and did his duty with honor for twenty-four years.

The Republicans are the party that never met a promise to Veterans they couldn't wait to break.

These are much more eggregious offenses than a botched joke, just for the record.

Where is the outrage about these things?

A week that inspires

The past few days have not made me breathe any easier or feel any better about those who are in charge being in charge. It started with Rumsfeld throwing his splendid tantrum during his press conference at the Pentagon on Thursday. Even though this administration has mismanaged the entire operation from the outset, those who question are supposed to "back off" and "realize it's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty."

Hmmmm. I seem to recall predictions of troops being greeted as liberators being made with absolute certainty. I recall being told there were WMD's with absolute surety. I recall being told Saddam had attempted to build nuclear weapons with absolute certainty. Now we are not making proclamations with absolute certainty and we have never been "stay the course" either. Lets all open our hymnals and sing from the same page.

Also on Thursday we learned that the Army will experience an $18Billion dollar shortfall for fiscal operating year 2008. That's a slap in the face. The Army has born the brunt of this war in both personnel and materiel.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, had requested $138 billion for FOY 2008. He has informed both administration officials and Congress the Army needs the money to replace and repair equipment used in Iraq, and to pay for other costs of the war, while still covering the day-to-day expenses to run the Army. Rumsfeld would not confirm the numbers Thursday and said any budget discussions are not final. He suggested that some money for the Army could come from supplemental budget requests. "It is very difficult to know what ought to go in the budget and what ought to go in the supplemental," Rumsfeld said.

Then on Friday, Pentagon Press Secretary Eric Ruff blatantly played politics in a news conference. He said that al Qae'da was stepping up attacks against Americans in Iraq because they wanted to have an effect on the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections. His words were measured to imply electing Democrats would please 'the terrorists who want to kill us all' (TM). "It would seem that if they can increase the violence, they can increase opposition to the war and have an influence against the president," Mr Ruff said. He actually cast the struggle by Iraqi insurgents as a "battle for the hearts and minds of the American people." He also said Iraqi insurgents "know this is a battle for the resolve of the American people. And if they can influence elections and get the American people to get tired of this war through their attacks, I think they see something."

When pressed, Mr Ruff said there were other explanations for the spike in violence, including heightened insurgent activity during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and stepped-up US military operations in Baghdad.

Rumsfeld was right about one thing: "It's a political season," he said. "And everyone's trying to make a little mischief out of this, and turn it into a political football."

Even the Pentagon.