Tag Archives: Donald Rumsfeld

CROSS THAT ONE OFF YOUR READING LIST

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Remember that DoD document dump you just haven’t quite found time to read yet? The 8,000 pages of documents on how they prepped army folks to act as outside “military analysts” while laying out the White House line on Iraq? I’m sure you have all 8,000 pages printed out and stacked someplace prominent around the house, ready to read any time now. But have no fear – LWB friend (and one-time guest blogger) Alyssa Rosenberg is reading them so you don’t have to. Check it out:

So it’s downright creepy to read the anecdotes about women pushed in the DOD talking points released last week–especially when they’re interspersed with terse updates on the U.S. military’s attempts to rewrite its pathetic sexual assault policies. When it comes to exploiting imagery of Iraqi and Afghan women, the talking points read like a combination of Pippi Longstocking stories and Lifetime movies. In a July 4, 2004 briefing, a group of peppy Afghan schoolgirls buttonhole Donald Rumsfeld on their way to sports camp (can it get any more girl-power than that?): “After being introduced, young Roia wasn’t shy about sharing her feelings with the secretary. ‘Mr. Secretary, all the girls we are very, very happy and pleased to be here,’ she said through a translator. ‘We have one message for you … Please don’t forget the Afghan girls and Afghan women.’ Rumsfeld’s answer was simple, but carried a lot of weight. ‘We don’t,’ he said. ‘You can count on it.'”

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DUTIFUL DUNCAN

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Apparently at least one guy out there agrees with me that there’s something of a vacuum in the Republican field for 2008 for a pro-Rumsfeld, pro-Tancredo, pro-Falwell conservative.

And public-spirited chap that he is, he’s ambling into it.

That vote against CAFTA isn’t likely to help there though.

OUT GROUP

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A couple paragraphs into Patrick Healy’s New York Times analysis on the New York Supreme Court’s decision rejecting equal marriage rights for gay couples is this peculiar turn of phrase:

Yesterday’s court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then — it came as a shocking insult to gay support groups.

Gay support groups? It’s old news that the Times is loathe to describe the camps in language like “pro-gay” or “anti-gay” for fear of bringing down another round of rebuke from those in the latter camp, many of whom were last seen promoting the idea that the paper is willfully trying to help Al-Qaeda assassinate Donald Rumsfeld. But it’s really disappointing to see the paper slip into language in describing political groups engaged in collective action to transform policies hostile to gay people which makes it sound like we’re talking about individuals struggling with how to make it through a plight or pathology.

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Two things that were striking in reading local news in Puerto Rico while we were there:

One of the dominant stories was Rumsfeld’s much-anticipated list of base closings, which Puerto Rico’s Buchanan ultimately escaped. What generally goes unstated in news write-ups of the process by which base closing decisions are made is what all the major players – the Secretary of Defense and his commissi on, the President, the US House, and the US Senate – have in common: no one in Puerto Rico gets to vote for them, or for the people who appointed them. While it goes without saying in local papers, it’s striking from an outsider’s perspective, and deeply problematic from a Heldian perspective that understands democracy as a measure of control over the decisions which shape one’s life, though arguably no more so than the situation of groups like the poor in the continental US who – largely – have the formal franchise but face significant obstacles to political mobilization and to getting a hearing from economic elites, or of the people’s of other countries which while not US territories are drastically affected by policies of the US government and its delegates over which they have no form of democratic control.

The other dominant story was an intensifying showdown between the territory’s Popular Democratic Party Governor and its New Progressive Party-controlled legislature over the Governor’s Cabinet appointments, especially his appointee for Secretary of State, whom the legislature voted down but who began serving in the job anyway. What was really striking to me as an outsider to Puerto Rican politics, but almost as true of coverage of the struggle over judicial appointments in the US Congress, is the total suffocation of any kind of issue background by horse race coverage – that is, speculations about who’s winning. Over five days of reading articles about this fight, I was unable to find a single sentence discussing the ideologies of any of these appointees or the issues at the heart of the power struggle. I know that Governor Acevedo Vila thinks Pont would be an excellent Secretary of State, and that NPP leaders think she’d be terrible, but I honestly could only guess what the areas of contention are. Seriously, if you know, I’m pretty curious at this point. And I doubt I’m the only one. Meanwhile, pundits in the continental US complaining about how boring the filibuster fight is to the American public should consider why the very real ideological issues driving forward the collision – like the power of the American people to harness government to pursue racial and economic justice – have been sidelined in the presentation of that fight.

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Shorter Bush Press Conference:

Question: How can Russia become more democratic?

Bush: Putin should have supported the war in Iraq. Also, the WTO.

Question: What does Rumsfeld have to do to rebuild trust?

Bush: Nothing.

Question: What did you learn from Bernard Kerik’s failed nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security?

Bush: He would have been an awesome Secretary of Homeland Security.

Question: Why are Americans so anxious about your plans in Iraq:

Bush: It’s those Iraqi troops’ fault for running off the battlefield whenever things get tough. Also, the media for some reason seems to think that bombings are more newsworthy than small businesses.

Question: Some people are worried that your social security plan will force millions of Americans to retire into poverty. What’s the deal?

Bush: Keep in mind, I also wannt to strip your right to sue big business and shut down more schools for getting low test scores. As for social security, don’t bother trying to trick me into telling you what my plan is. For now, I’m just focusing on whipping the public into unsubstantiated panic. And keep in mind, FDR is dead.

Question: How many more Christmases are American troops going to have to spend in Iraq?

Bush: I’m too clever to set policy goals that’ll you’ll just turn around and criticize me for when I abjectly fail to meet them. Also, I know how to use the expression “in toto.”

Question: What are you going to do about Iran and North Korea?

Bush: Saddam Hussein, he was a bad guy. He violated a lot of UN resolutions.

Question: Why don’t you veto some of these spending bills?

Bush: Because I told Congress what to put in them.

Question: Whose benefits are secure?

Bush: Killing Social Security would be a lot easier if those old people didn’t keep getting so panicked. It’s not their checks I want to reneg on – just everybody else’s.

Question: How is it no one seems to agree with your immigration plan?

Bush: I know immigration. I was Governor of Texas.

Question: Where the hell is Osama bin Laden? And what’s with the violations of international law at Guantanamo Bay?

Bush: Well, we’ve killed a bunch of people other than Osama bin Laden. And clearly the world community isn’t paying enough attention to our Supreme Court decision.

Question: Why doesn’t Rumsfeld sign condolence letters to the families of troops he’s sending to get killed?

Bush: I know he seems gruff, but believe me he’s a real teddy bear inside.

Question: How did the war in Iraq affect prospects for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Bush: Everybody’s got a lot of responsibilities. Also, Yasser Arafat and Colin Powell are both out of the picture now. Now, on to high school football…

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From the San Francisco Chronicle:

On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he’d been “kicked in the guts, slapped in the face.” Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

“It was the end of the world,” said one officer Thursday. “It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers.”

First lesson for the troops, it seemed: Don’t ever talk to the media “on the record” — that is, with your name attached — unless you’re giving the sort of chin-forward, everything’s-great message the Pentagon loves to hear.

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for…