[quote=“Chewycorns”]Well, of course the media, liberal Forumosans, and other nattering nabobs of negativity don’t include the names of the retired generals and foreign policy experts who support Rumsfeld.
Retired generals such as John Crosby, Thomas McInerney, Burton Moore and Paul Vallely said Rumsfeld was "arguably one of the most effective secretaries of defense our nation has ever had."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the four generals said that as long as Rumsfeld retains the confidence of US President George W. Bush, he will make the important calls at the top of the Department of Defense.
“That’s the way America works,” the generals said. “So let’s all breathe into a bag and get on with winning the global war against radical Islam.” :bravo:
The late president Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, speaking on CNN television’s Late Edition program, hailed Rumsfeld as “a distinguished public servant who has done an outstanding job.”[/quote]
Anyone else the the irony of this post? The media supposedly ignores the supporters of Rumsfeld, then we are given a list of media sources interviewing supporters of Rumsfeld.
Navillus -
No irony.
Simply correcting a wrong impression.
As I mentioned in my previous post, these few Generals - all retired - are a miniscule number.
They are now certainly entitled to their opinion - and the MSM is certainly willing to give them amplified air time. But they in no way, shape or form reflect the opinion of anything approaching the majority of staff level officers active or retired.
Once upon a time, someone thought it’d be a good idea to publish a book titled, “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein”. When asked about it, Einstein replied, “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
That seems a pretty smart answer to me. So…
does it matter how many are for or against Rummy? What’s the best means of measuring whether he’s been right or wrong?
I don’t know if laughable is the right adjective. The fact that ANY career service men, especially generals have spoken out against one in the President’s cabinent is in itself indicitive of how this unjustified and illegal war has gone from bad to worse. It’s not just a matter of a few generals speaking out, it’s which generals are speaking out. These are men who have been involved since the beginning, the planning stages and during troop deployment. Generals who were overseeing rebuilding and insurgent supression…These men have a much better idea than anyone in the whitehouse as to what’s working and what’s not. And the President should listen to them. In fact, he should have listened to them or at least read their reports before the war got underway.
Oh, and I think the Iraqis in Baghdad who STILL don’t have running water or power will be happy to know that the US embassy is almost complete, coming in at just under 1 billion dollars. Read about it at msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798/ Can the US make ONE good decision concerning Iraq?
Am sure malicious liberals and poet socialists will say some nasty things but lots of extraordinary accomplishments over six decades of public service.
‘As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns.’
The things we know we don’t know shouldn’t scare us. I don’t think I ever read any book he wrote, but I don’t think the guy who wrote The Green Zone was complimentary.
BTW, Taos, NM is a god-damned spectacularly beautiful place.
I’m not sure if hoodwinking the American people into a multi-trillion dollar quagmire in the Middle East qualifies as public service but if it does he was one of the best.
I’d wish it on Xi or maybe Kim Jong-Un. Not out of malice, but if that person’s death would help prevent worse catastrophes for the world down the line.
I’ll plead the fifth here. Anyway they’d all be replaced by likeminded business people in their exact mold so it wouldn’t matter much. I think it’d be far harder to replace a singular personality like Xi. His predecessor was not nearly as ambitious, authoritarian, charismatic, jingoistic, etc. so his successor might not be either.
In any event, this probably isn’t the appropriate thread for this conversation.
