Seymour Hersh said something startling about Rumsfeld on Democracy Now

[Armstead]

Hersh was interviewed a couple of days ago on Democracy Now. I just heard it today while listening to the podcast in my car, and it took me aback.

Hersh said that Rumsfeld was "not on board" regarding the administration's hawkish current goals and actions regarding Israel's bombing campaign and potential US attack on Iran.

He compared Rummy to Robert MacNamara, who as Sec. of Defense was originally a hawk about Vietnam, but eventually became convinced that the war was a lost cause, and that the US should cut its losees.

Hersh said Rumsfeld is getting less enthusiastic about the Shock and Awe Neo CON policies, and is concerned about the GIs in Iraq, and how this would affect them.

If Hersh is correct, and Rumsfeld is now one of the more "moderate" voices in the administration, we have veered further off course than we realize...Or maybe it's a bellweather that even many of the uber hawks are finally getting more realistic?

The next couple of years are sure going to be interesting (in terms of the old Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times."}

[Julius Civitatus]

1. Rummy? Concerned about the GIs? Naaaaaah....

Can't be right. The guy lacks any human empathy whatsoever.

[InkAddict]

22. Perhaps for him there's now just more profit in the "drugs" our Servicemen

will need to be taking for the rest of their lives to function (cope) following their tours. Acting in the NeoCons best interest while screwing the USA isn't new to him. He's just falling back to his business "Roots." And his sites are set on anti-depressants and deconstructing the population of Africa.

[LaurenG]

2. I must be very jaded because

I can't see Rummy caring about anything but himself barring of course that he's had a "come to Jesus moment".

[Armstead]

4. It could be a "come to Jesus few years"

Even the hardest head can be penetrated with enough drip,drip,drip.

[LaurenG]

12. I would welcome a compassionate conservative

I fear they have gone the way of the dodo bird and the passenger pigion. That old *bad word of choice here* hasn't changed a bit, he still thinks he's the PNAC king with the agenda ever pushing him forward.

I can't buy into the propaganda that he cares, my gut says differently.

[Recursion]

9. Have you seen him lately?

I think the Macnamara comparison is right on; Rummy looks, walks, and talks like a broken man, just like Macnamara did. He had a vision and he's seen it be destroyed.

[BOSSHOG]

3. bush has many options available to him

should rumsfeld develop a conscience and step down. bush has a myriad of "conservative" brilliant military minds to choose from to run the DOD. limbaugh, hannity, o'reilly, krystol, wolfowitz, pearle, hume, coulter, savage, beck. The list of "conservatives" who are subject matter experts on everything military and war planning and tactics is just so fucking incredibly long. They overwhelm the masses daily with their brilliance.

[babylonsister]

5. I read that, but if Rummy is having such qualms, he should resign.

He's got to be 'on board' to a certain extent or he'd just tell them to go to hell.

[Armstead]

10. Maybe they're preparing for "spending more time with family"

I can't envision Rummy making a public break. But if he is increasingly queasy about the even more hawkish administration, it could lead to a less dramatic "resignation for personal reasons."

[spanone]

6. Too late Rummy, the genie is out of the bottle.

You fucked up beyond belief you prick. NOw the world is paying for it.

[Synnical]

7. DC's 'Open secret': Rumsfeld wants to quit Iraq (the life of 'fobbits')

From LBN - Aug 14th, 2006

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2456401&mesg_id=2456401

[peacetalksforall]

8. I don't thnk R's words and attitudes reflect any change. He is still an

arrogant, beligerant, know-it-all (button pushing killing, maiming, and family/career destroying machine and tax money thief).

[JHB]

11. Concern for GIs? eh, maybe. Concern for how history will judge him? Yep!

I think it's possible Rummy's finally noticed that they've created a bigger mess than they'd planned on, they hadn't figured all the angles after all, and is worried that Dick and Chim-Chim are going to try to spin it so that all the crap is laid at his (Rummy's) feet.

[Octafish]

13. Rummy's remorse is a rumor.

People talk about how he "feels" and they don't think about the illegal Iraq invasion.

[Armstead]

15. Don't forget MacNamara

No one would have thought that about him either.

MacNamara was culpable for many years in Vietnam, but at least he tried to sorta make amends years later by admitting the truth.

[acmavm]

14. TOO FRIGGING LATE! He's a large part of why this is such

a screwed up death march for the Iraqi people and our troops.

[htuttle]

16. Rummy was out to prove his 'Revolution in Military Affairs' would work.

...However, it does not. There is a limit to which technology can substitute for human spirit and intelligence. What he was hoping for was the ability to fight a war without friendly casualties -- the equivalent of a 'robot army'. He wanted to lower the *political* cost of war, with the trade off of raising the *financial* cost of war. Since he's tight with the Military Industrial Complex, more expensive weapons just means more profit for his homies. And, a lower political cost of war means they can fight wars more often.

But the way it all turned out, he's probably realizing that history's going to blame him for the wholesale destruction of the US military, and some of the worst strategic mistakes since Napolean invaded Russia.

[sarge43]

17. Nah, just like Powell, it's merely a CYA n/t

[seemslikeadream]

18. Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

~Donald Rumsfeld

[seemslikeadream]

19. WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE

18 Sep 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells the House Armed Services Commitee: " has amassed large clandestine stocks of biological weapons... including anthrax and botulism toxin and possibly smallpox. His regime has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin and mustard gas... has at this moment stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons."



19 Sep 2002 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells the Senate Armed Services Commitee: "There are a number of terrorist states pursuing weapons of mass destruction -- Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, just to name a few -- but no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."



20 Jan 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares: "Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons... His regime is paying a high price to pursue weapons of mass destruction -- giving up billions of dollars in oil revenue. His regime has large, unaccounted for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons -- including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas; anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox -- and he has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons."



20 Jan 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares: "It should be noted that biological weapons -- which Iraq and North Korea both possess -- can be as deadly, and arguably more immediate a danger -- because they are simpler and cheaper and deliver, and are even more readily transferred to terrorist networks than are nuclear weapons."



30 Mar 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells This Week with George Stephanopoulos: "the area... that coalition forces control... happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."



4 May 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Fox News Sunday: "we never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country... We're going to find what we find as a result of talking to people, I believe, not simply by going to some site and hoping to discover it."



27 May 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells the Council on Foreign Relations: "Now what happened? Why weren't they used? I don’t know. There are several possible reasons for that... it may very well be that they didn’t have time to... use chemical weapons. It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict."



24 Jun 2003 At a press briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares: "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons."



10 Sep 2003 In a speech to the National Press Club, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares: "I said, 'We know they're in that area.' I should have said, 'I believe they're in that area.' Our intelligence tells us they're in that area, and that was our best judgment."



4 Feb 2004 When asked by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee whether Saddam might never have possessed the WMDs in question, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld replies: "I suppose that's possible, but not likely."



17 May 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells an audience at the Heritage Foundation that he fully expects to find those WMDs, eventually: "I can't guess how much longer it will take to get what we will finally look and say was ground truth -- certainly months, maybe a year-plus. I just don't know how long it will take. We certainly won't just discover anything. I mean, we did not just discover Saddam Hussein, and he was hiding in a hole that was big enough to put chemical weapons in it that would kill tens of thousands of people."

[Sinti]

20. I doubt his conscience is acting up, however If Rummy Resigns

and leaves by his own choice, they are going down. Rumsfeld has an uncanny sense of timing, he always jumps out of the pan just before the fire is lit and comes away smelling like a rose - the rose part may not work out for him this time. If you look into his history, this has always been the case for him.

[cool user name]

21. I heard that too and I was a bit amazed too. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

23. Hate to say it, but I think Seymour Hersh has been stung by a

disinformation op. Rumsfeld having pangs of conscience about our troops is simply not believable. McNamara was part of TWO liberal administrations! Horribly misguided though the second one was, on the Vietnam War, it was still the administration of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and many other social justice advances. And when LBJ came up against massive disapproval of his war, he resigned (--in effect; withdrew from the 1968 presidential race). Where do you see ANY evidence of conscience, of social justice, or responsiveness to the will of the American people, in the Bush junta? It is nowhere to be found, on any policy, or in any person.

Rumsfeld is being blamed for this disaster and has planted seeds around town aimed at distancing him from it. It is just as cynical as it can be. He has toadies running interference for him, and all sorts of domestic 'special ops' at work, to manipulate the rumor mill, destroy people, blackmail people, and spin stories. He's my pick for mastermind of the Plame outing, and I think it involved far more than that one bit of treason (a plot to plant WMDs in Iraq, that possibly resulted in the assassination of the Brits' chief WMD expert, David Kelly, four days after Plame was outed). I also want to know where he was on 9/11. He pulled all NORAD decision-making into his hands several months before, then went AWOL during the critical hour, when our nation's capitol was undefended.

This is a callous, cold son of a bitch, of the kind the SS was made of. And I'm sorry Hersh has fallen for this remorse story. He can be an incredibly good reporter.

"Hersh said Rumsfeld is getting less enthusiastic about the Shock and Awe Neo CON policies..." Right. Less enthusiastic? Meaning he's not cheering the looting and death any more? Gotten a little tired of slaughtering and torturing innocent people? Can't get enough oil out of the ground there to please HIS puppetmasters? Rumsfeld IS a NeoCon. These are HIS policies. And I don't think we've seen the end of them. Get ready for "Gulf of Tonkin II"--a manufactured incident with Iran. Then we're in it. And God help the Iranian people and our poor cannon fodder.

I think this planted rumor about Rumsfeld is the lull before the storm. One October Surprise, coming up! --to be followed by full scale war in the Middle East and seizure of CHINA's oil supply in Iran. I see absolutely no sense of accountability to the American people anywhere in this junta. We are being used for a private corporate oil war and associated looting of our federal treasury. They have everything in place to force us into this--complete control of the election system, through Bushite electronic voting corporations and their TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code; a bloodthirsty, war profiteering corporate news monopoly propaganda machine; a lapdog, Diebold (s)elected Congress; a Bush junta-appointed Supreme Court; and NO check and balance of any kind on executive power--they don't view laws and court rulings as applying to THEM. Why would they be making these wild assertions of power, with a 35% approval rating, if they did not intend to use them to OVERCOME that dismal, longstanding approval rating by brute force?

Furthermore, they cannot afford NOT to attack Iran and catapult us into a wider war. They have nothing else! Everything they touch turns to ashes. And they have no other means by which to prevent investigations of their massive crimes and thievery; Stolen Election III or not, such investigations will proceed; they are filthy dirty in every way imaginable, and the truth will come out--unless there is some large crisis with which to squelch it.

Everything points to a manufactured excuse for a widened war, with some sort of emergency powers invoked to shut down any protest. Have we learned nothing from history? This is what fascists DO. It might be difficult to pull off in this country. But I see nothing that can stop it in the short term. These are war criminals. They are on the run. They will do whatever it takes to DENY anyone the power to hold them accountable.

And even if Bush Disaster II is somehow prevented, I will never believe that it was Rumsfeld who stopped it. A revolt of the military establishment AGAINST him is more likely. He may be "cutting his losses" all right. But not out of concern for anything but his own hide.

------------------------

Another thought occurred to me--that some sort of deal is in the works, that Hersh could be privy to, to exchange returning the country to normalcy and NOT invading Iran, for letting certain people off the hook. Maybe Hersh is helping this deal along--thinking it is the best (or only) way out of this dark night. A Banana Republic sort of a deal--where the junta is "permitted" to leave the country, out of the reach of its laws and people, and even permitted to abscond with lots of loot--to get rid of them! In the absence of some motive like this (a good motive), I must say I am surprised to find Hersh allowing himself (except inadvertently) to be squeezed between the blame-throwing criminals of the junta (exonerating Rumsfeld--sort of (he has 'less enthusiasm" for the slaughter) and blaming the "NeoCons"). I can't imagine that he's a water-carrier for Rumsfeld. He seems too smart to be used in this way by anybody. And he surely must loathe Rumsfeld. Maybe he really believes the rumor. I guess anybody can be stung by a clever enough "source." If I were him, I'd look askance at that source. Because I sure don't believe it. I think it's ludicrous and transparent, and it makes me extremely concerned that the opposite is about to happen: more war.