1. Turns out he personally obstructed sending military aid to Katrina victims for five days. Why? Something about "unity of command" issues. Hell if I can understand it.
2. His post-invasion intelligence briefings on Iraq were filled with nutty Biblical imagery. If these images had leaked, the Muslim world would have reacted with outrage -- and properly so.If you are atheist, agnostic, or outside the Judeo-Christian traditions, you may not appreciate the use of your tax dollars to fight a holy war. As Frank Rich notes:
Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible.3. He was a key opponent of a successful effort to prevent Ted Kennedy from receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
4. Marcy Wheeler, in a superb piece for Salon, demonstrates that Rumsfeld bears personal responsibility for the use of torture:
As secretary of defense, Rumsfeld signed off on interrogation methods used in the military, notably for Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base and Guantánamo Bay. With this approval, the use of torture would move from the CIA to the military. A recent bipartisan Senate report concluded that "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there."Unfortunately, Barack Oabam has given Rumsfeld a get-out-of-jail-free card. And I don't think Obi will give Ted the Medal of Freedom.
7 comments:
I can't help but think you got your negatives in a bind on #3, Joe.
Rumsfield would make the perfect scapegoat, a high ranking administration official to hang war crimes on.
where or when did Obama give Rummy a "get out of jail free" card?
So far, he has only immunized the lower ecehlon types that were acting under orders. CIA dudes that actually (aprearantly) hired "private contractors", the real Nazis, to do the dirty deeds.
And what do you want to bet Rummy is still crazier than we think?
The GQ magazine piece on this subject has quotes from a high Bush official and Andy Card, chief of staff, during the Katrina mess. She couldn't get a return call from Rumsfeld, so Card called her, asking 'what do you need?' She replied, 'I need you to know what a f* asshole Rumsfeld is.' Card commiserated, but offered by way of apologetics 'it's not just you, he treats Condi the same way.'
So, it is now a three-way race as to which Bush high appointment was worse: Cheney, Rumsfeld, or AG Alberto Gonzalez. (Although since Cheney was Rumsfeld's protege, gaining his own SecDef position from Rumsfeld's patronage and nomination, maybe you have to blame Rumsfeld for Cheney as well. If so, we have a winner, folks!)
XI
Anon - Obama has said - implicitly or explicity over and over (starting way back in the primaries, when he talked about "looking to the future, not the past) that he doesn't hold with the notion of prosecuting anyone at all from the Bush administration.
Sergei Rostov
I read how on the nights before they went into battle, some US troops in Iraq were being whipped into a religious frenzy by a chaplain's fire-and-brimstone "Holy War" rhetoric. I wonder who ordered that - Bush? Rumsfeld? Or...?
On a related note, I have an in-law who - before he headed over to combat in Iraq - was talking about how he was going to convert some Iraqis to Christianity....
(Oh, I'm partly in the J-C traditin, and I still don't appreciate that use of my tax dollars, for a number of reasons.)
Sergei Rostov
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