The wrong time to stand by his man

April 15, 2006

In the face of mounting calls for [tag]Donald Rumsfeld[/tag]’s dismissal from top generals, the president interrupted his vacation yesterday to stand by his man.

In an unusual statement issued from Camp David, where he had already retired for the weekend, [tag]Bush[/tag] stepped directly into the debate over Rumsfeld’s performance to offer his “strong support” and make it clear he will keep the embattled defense secretary. Rumsfeld separately declared that he will not go. […]

“Secretary Rumsfeld’s energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.”

Bush’s timing couldn’t have been much worse.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld closely monitored the late 2002 interrogation of a key Guantanamo Bay prison detainee at the same time that the prisoner was subjected to treatment that a military investigator later called ”degrading and abusive,” according to newly released documents.

The documents, portions of a December 2005 Army inspector general report, disclosed for the first time that Rumsfeld spoke weekly with the Guantanamo commander, Major Geoffrey Miller, about the progress of the interrogation of a Saudi man suspected of a connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The intense attention Rumsfeld and Miller were paying to the interrogation raises new questions about their later claims that they knew nothing about the tactics interrogators used, which included a range of physically intense and sexually humiliating techniques similar to those in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq.

Salon’s Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin broke this story yesterday after obtaining documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Heck of a job, Rummy.

Johnathan Alter: Now, you mentioned this book about Franklin Roosevelt. Well, everybody remembers that he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It sometimes seems, with the Bush crowd, that their motto is, The only thing we have to use is fear itself. …From Olbermann’s Countdown.

Rummy (and Cheney) are fear-based powerbrokers. Bush has no choice… it’s all he has left.

  • “The intense attention Rumsfeld and Miller were paying to the interrogation raises” serious questions about Rummy’s sadomasochistic tendencies, too. This whole crowd seems to have an unhealthy interest in physical torture.

  • They are all sociopaths, Ed, that’s why.

    This kind of controversy works well for us.
    The more unpopular Cheney, Rummy and
    the other bastards become, the more foolish,
    stubborn and incompetent Bush looks in
    standing by them.

  • Rumfmy is the al-Qaida’s main man. They’ve been winning big ever since he took personal charge of the war and began micro managing it. This is reminisant of Hitler taking personal command of the troops in the field over ruling their decisions. Through Ultra the allies knew about the plot to assinate him, Hitler. They were against the assination. Without Hitler Germany may well have won the war according to now declassified papers.

  • A leader should never ask anyone to do anything he isn’t willing to do first.

    Looks like Rummy passes the “leadership” test for Bu$hCo.

  • If Donald Rumsfeld was as successful as Secretary of Defense as he was in becoming a multi millionaire, we would hve very little to say. Unfortunately he was a failure as Secretary of Defense. See my post on Rumsfeld on my blog Politics and the Law at hladdie.blogspot.com

  • Rummy and Cheney are the “brains”, if you will, behind this administration’s actions. They go way back together with previous ties to the Pentagon, RAND Corp. and PNAC. Bush is just the face and the voice, which allows the “men behind the curtain” to do that voo-doo that they do.

    Rummy isn’t going anywhere.

  • This is going to be about whether Rumsfeld should stay in office, but I’m going to get there indirectly.

    This weekend, Bush attacked reports that he wishes to bomb Iran as “wild speculation”. This is disingenuous at best. He got us involved in Iraq by lies and distortions. Long after his plans for invasion were fixed in stone, he had ‘no plans for invasion on his desk’ and he ‘just needed authorization from Congress to negotiate with Sadam from a position of strength’. Discussion of invasion was ‘premature’ up until the moment that ‘it was too late to change the plans’. Bush selectively reported information, leaked parts of documents that supported his position, spun a nearly unprecedented disinformation campaign, slimed anyone not lined up behind him, and played up people’s fears to suit his purposes. He was prepared to fake an incident to precipitate his war, he backed Sadam into an impossible corner for the same purpose, and he and his people lied to connect Iraq to 9/11. He appears to lie routinely, about nearly everything, whether he needs to or not, and it’s a matter of principle with him not to provide anyone outside the White House with full information or full disclosure about anything. So now we are supposed to avoid speculation and believe what he tells us with respect to Iran? Especially after he has already labelled Iran a member of an “axis of evil”? No way.

    Bush now announces his solid support for Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld, Cheney, & Bush have been insistent about “staying the course” and relying on a high-tech, low-manpower military, and they are notoriously fixed and ideological in their way of thinking. They haven’t much modified their strategy in Iraq or indeed learned much of anything from problems and failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, so why should we expect them to change now? They have to be satisfied with the way their “shock and awe” tactics worked at the beginning of the Iraq invasion, and what can rank higher on the “shock & awe” scale than a nuclear attack? If Bush wants to convince us that “speculation” about his plans for war with Iran is wrong, he could usefully replace Rumsfeld with someone who has a notably different outlook on how to handle diplomatic and military problems in the middle east. Until then (and probably even afterward), we would be foolish to expect anything other than a repeat of Iraq, except with an ‘n’ instead of a ‘q’.

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