now this IS proper news!

[CoolGirl]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6130296.stm

discuss....

my view? nar narny nar nar :P

[philipMac]

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/ATA/24818BP~The-Simpsons-Nelson-Haha-Posters.jpg

[Ed]

I like Donald Rumsfelt :(

[hovis]

:smt015

[philipMac]

I like Donald Rumsfelt :(
He might be a nice bloke.
But, starting a spurious and unwinnable war against a nameless faceless enemy, that you yourself previously armed, pouring your best military personnel along billions of dollars into this war, and killing huge amounts of people for no notable improvement in anything for anyone other than big oil companies has to have political consequences.

[UlsterSV]

Would it not have been better PR to fire him before the elections? Not that it really matters now anyway. They achieved what they set out to do, and I'm sure Mr Rumsfeld hasn't lost any sleep over what he's done.

[philipMac]

Would it not have been better PR to fire him before the elections? Not that it really matters now anyway. They achieved what they set out to do, and I'm sure Mr Rumsfeld hasn't lost any sleep over what he's done.

I am not sure.
It might have looked like a sign of weakness.
They have achieved what they set out to do though. And Rumsfeld will die a rich happy man, despite being directly responsible for the deaths of vast numbers of people. He will more than likely be very proud of his achievements.

A sort of hollow victory... but, you will take them where you can get them at this point, no?
He's gone. And the Reps are on the ropes. This is alright in my book.

[Razor]

Rumsfeld is a more insidious barsteward than you thought...

http://www.rense.com/general67/rum.htm

[CoolGirl]

Rumsfeld is a more insidious barsteward than you thought...

http://www.rense.com/general67/rum.htm

bleurgh! that stuff always left a bitter taste...

[Jelster]

He might be a nice bloke.
But, starting a spurious and unwinnable war against a nameless faceless enemy, that you yourself previously armed, pouring your best military personnel along billions of dollars into this war, and killing huge amounts of people for no notable improvement in anything for anyone other than big oil companies has to have political consequences.

Like he did it al on his own then ???

Americans.... Only ever want to get into a fight they know they can win....

After 9/11 most Americans would have backed Bush if he declared war on the UK. It may have been wrong and it may have been stupid, but there's far to many "I told you so's" IMPO. He did as he was told to do, nothing more nothing less, and when you control the forces of the strongest super power in the world it ain't that difficult to make a **** up is it ?

I'm not defending him, just looking at it from a different perspective.

.

[philipMac]

Like he did it al on his own then ???

Americans.... Only ever want to get into a fight they know they can win....

After 9/11 most Americans would have backed Bush if he declared war on the UK. It may have been wrong and it may have been stupid, but there's far to many "I told you so's" IMPO. He did as he was told to do, nothing more nothing less, and when you control the forces of the strongest super power in the world it ain't that difficult to make a c*ck up is it ?

I'm not defending him, just looking at it from a different perspective.

.

Alright... on 9/11, I was teaching in a university in Ireland, and I walked back into the computer lab, and I saw all this plane stuff happening. And I thought, Jesus, Saddam's pulled it off. And, as the second plane slammed in, I leaned back, and looked across as Bashir, a Libyan dude who sat next to me, and I said, this is Saddam, right?
And, he thought for about 10 seconds and said, I am not sure who did this, but I can tell you who i think didnt do it. Saddam Hussein. It might have been this guy Bin Laden.
He then went through a few reasons why he thought this way. The main reason that he thought that it had nothing at all to do with Iraq, was that Hussein absolutely hates fundamentalist Islamists. They scare him, and present him with something he is not happy with dealing with.

As time went on, it became more and more clear that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with sept 11. Eventually, even Bush et al didnt really say it, instead they liked to have innuendo injected into the people via scummy "news" agencies ie Fox.

By the time they invaded, they were muttering some things about how Al Qaeda might have talked to, or had an operation in, Iraq. (It turns out that the UK definately did have these sort of people knocking around, but seems unlikely that Iraq ever did.)
They invaded Iraq because they presented a clear danger to the rest of the world via these weapons of mass destruction. Which turned out to not exist.
(The real reason that they invaded Iraq was vengeance, and Oil.)

My point is, that if Bashir can work this out in 10 seconds, then Rumsfeld categorically knew it when he invaded. He knew Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. That's his job. He is not a stupid man.

Regardless of this, as soon as Rumsfeld knew about 9/11, the incident that Rumsfeld et al had been pre-emptively planning around in his secret "Project for the New American Century" friends, he started setting up the Iraq war, which he had been begging Clinton to do for the previous 8 years. He then implemented this "Rumsfeld Doctrine" of not sending in enough troops, which drove the military crazy. "Just enough troops to lose" is how it's often referred to as.

He was the one that said that the Geneva convention was optional. He admitted that Abu Ghraib was his fault, and did nothing about it.

He is also almost been implicated in fraudulently making money off via his position, (tamiflu, aspartame), but he managed to slither out of that.

He is a dirty guy. He is not the only dirty guy in the administration, it wasn't all him, but he is up to his neck in it. The military have been screaming for his exit for a while, because, he has failed them, he has lost them their friends lives, and put them (and UK troops) in this awful position. He failed badly at being Secretary of Defense. Good riddance to him.

[Smurf]

He is a dirty guy. He is not the only dirty guy in the administration, it wasn't all him, but he is up to his neck in it.

I think that's the real point, for all his faults he's not the real power behind the throne. Frankly compared to people like Cheney, Pearl and Wolfowitz (who probably was involved even deeper than rummy on the strategy of the whole debacle) he's a pussycat, Albeit a grouchy old pussycat that likes shred furniture and torture mice.

But those guys will never be brought to book, never mind bodies they know where whole mass graves are. I'd really encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to get The Power of Nightmares which was shown on the BBC a couple of years ago. It's not without faults but it's a throwback to the days when investigative journalism was a little more than an 0898 hotline in the Sun if you've slept with the slapper from Girls Aloud.

[Jelster]

The real reason that they invaded Iraq was vengeance, and Oil.

And that's my point.... On his own Rumsfeld would never "go to war" miles from home for the sake of oil that could never be guaranteed to come back to the States. He was just a pawn (OK, maybe a knight or a rook) and part of the mechanics for a deliberate drive from the US Government to:

A) Show that you don't take them on and win, and
B) Try to ensure that the gas guzziling US has additional oil reserves.

And please, don't say there was NEVER any WMD's, of course there was, it was the UK & US who either sold them, or brokered the deals. The fact that they have never been found means that they were either sold on again (I don't think anybody has thought about that one), used (as in gassing the Kurds) or maybe still very well hidden.

.

[northwind]

One down... But I'll miss his press conferences:

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."

Beautiful.

[Jelster]

One down... But I'll miss his press conferences:

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."

Beautiful.

Actually Northy that is a very common type of discription about information. Many sales courses teach you:

There the things you know, the things you know you don't know
There are things you don't know, and things you don't know you don't know

ie...

What I know - I know the customer requires a service, I don't know who my compition is

What I don't know - I may knot realise that I know more about his IT system, and there are just things that I don't even know exist that may influenece any deal (the don't know that I don't know's)

So, his statement is pretty realistic in real life....

.

[UlsterSV]

The real reason for war was israel. Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Ari Fleischer, Richard Perle, David Wurmser are all pro-israel extremists and all played a part in the Bush administration. And they're just the tip of the iceberg. Safe to say, they're all knee deep in israeli ****. Oil was just a sweetener for the Texas Tyrant.

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening,
containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein
from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of
foiling Syria’s regional ambitions."

"A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm" "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." A report on israel's future written by Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith amongst others. Isn't it funny how although there were an unbelievably high number of Zionists in the Bush administration and how the destruction of Iraq would be greatly beneficial to israel, that none of this has been brought up by our Zionist press?

[Ed]

USV - I think that this is a most serious allegation. To date about 130 United Kingdom military and 2,900 United States military have been killed in Iraq, these figs don't include injured, nor do they include other coalition forces nor do they include Iraqi military or civilians. If you add these in then the figures are way way higher.

It is a very serious allegation to claim that their deaths have been for the purpose of bolstering Israeli security.

Let me make clear: I'm not saying your allegations are wrong, you are right that this aspect does not appear to have been reported anywhere so I haven't heard the suggestion before. It didn't come out of any of the inquiries we've had, but maybe it was hushed up. What I am saying is that the allegation is very serious and naturally invites a requirement for proof.

[Smurf]

It didn't come out of any of the inquiries we've had, but maybe it was hushed up. What I am saying is that the allegation is very serious and naturally invites a requirement for proof.

Proof is the one thing you'd be hard pressed to find given TB's fondness for having these strategy meetings with no minutes taken. Even if someone was brave enough to come forward there would just be a smear campaign like in the David Kelly case.

The Kelly case is also a good example of how to run an inquiry to get the result your after, appoint a friend to run it and give it an extremely narrow focus on an area you think your critics are weak on (in that case, Gilligan) and ignore everything else.

Given the vast swathes of circumstantial evidence it's not a stretch of any ones imagination to believe that non-compliance was just a useful excuse to launch a war with very different aims than those stated, after all if illegal WMD's and ignoring UN resolutions were all it took to be invaded most of us could think of half a dozen countries that posed more of a threat than Iraq ever did.

[UlsterSV]

It's more than just bolstering israel's security, it's about making them the one superpower in the Middle East. The israelis don't want to be fighting everyone forever and the only way they can safeguard themselves is by ensuring they're superior in every way to their neighbours. Their next aim is to ensure they are the only country in the ME with nuclear weapons.

Organisations like AIPAC and ZOA (and the Zionist mass media of course) are far more powerful even than the President. They answer to no-one and are regulated by no-one but themselves. So if you're waiting for a report you'd best not hold your breath! You look at the history of the ME and how the British and Americans have continually screwed the Arabs over in the name israel, and yet none of this is ever mentioned in the mass media? It never mentions what kind of impact israel has had on the whole situation out there? That alone is a good indication as to why the war was fought. It's not what the media says, it's what it doesn't say that matters.

But the Arab Muslims are under no illusions as to why the invasion happened. In 1998 in an interview Bin Laden told the Americans to elect an administration that acted in their best interests rather than the interests of Zionism. I've even heard the Arabs refer to the invading Americans as "forces of Zion". The Muslims know the score. They're not the blood-thirsty madmen the media would have you believe.

[philipMac]

The real reason that they invaded Iraq was vengeance, and Oil.

And that's my point.... On his own Rumsfeld would never "go to war" miles from home for the sake of oil that could never be guaranteed to come back to the States. He was just a pawn (OK, maybe a knight or a rook) and part of the mechanics for a deliberate drive from the US Government to:

A) Show that you don't take them on and win, and
B) Try to ensure that the gas guzziling US has additional oil reserves.

And please, don't say there was NEVER any WMD's, of course there was, it was the UK & US who either sold them, or brokered the deals. The fact that they have never been found means that they were either sold on again (I don't think anybody has thought about that one), used (as in gassing the Kurds) or maybe still very well hidden.

.

I am just not buying Rummy was a pawn. He was a major player in the administration. He was not the only player, but he was not at all in a trivial position. Like I said, and Ulster also alluded to, he was a member of this "Project for the New American Century", which has, as one of its explicit aims, the encouragement of a US Empire, and the over throwing of Saddam Hussein.
He personally campaigned directly to Clinton to have this war on his watch.

He, along with this group planned for a "Pearl Harbor" type attack, to set this plan in motion. Now, you and Ulster are dead right, there is this very shadowy cabal of people playing games here. And Rumsfeld is one of the few visible members of this cabal, but that doesnt mean he isnt very influential.

He was the guy that defined how the war was fought, with initially few troops etc.

WRT the whole WMDs, well, yeah, no question they had them. At one point. But, they also had one of the biggest libraries of collected human knowledge in the world.
They dont have either any more. Or, if they do, they have done the best hiding job I have ever seen. No, they dont have them now. The US got that one wrong. They have admitted that.

No question though, they had them at one stage.

WRT the whole Zionist plan Ulster talks of... I dont know what to say. Certainly Israel are quite happy to see the Iraq war. Certainly they play games, and pull strings from far away, and are a powerful lobby. Other than that... well, I dont really buy it... I am sort of a skeptic. Too much tail wagging the dog for me.
Who knows. Maybe I am just naive. :)

[Jelster]

The overthrow of Saddam has played more into the hands of Iran than Israel. They are now the "local" or incumbent power of the Middle East. And as long as Israel continue to kill innocent people and have it broadcast all over the west, they will lose more and more supporters outside of the area too.

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that Rumsfeld was a part of the "executive" team that planned the assult on Iraq, but he was far from being alone, and no one man should take the blame. Personally I felt that we should have gone straight into Iraq and sorted out Saddam after the first Gulf war, we had good reason to, and the support of the UN. We missed the opportunity to sort the problem out and are paying for it now.

.

[philipMac]

The overthrow of Saddam has played more into the hands of Iran than Israel. They are now the "local" or incumbent power of the Middle East. And as long as Israel continue to kill innocent people and have it broadcast all over the west, they will lose more and more supporters outside of the area too.

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that Rumsfeld was a part of the "executive" team that planned the assult on Iraq, but he was far from being alone, and no one man should take the blame. Personally I felt that we should have gone straight into Iraq and sorted out Saddam after the first Gulf war, we had good reason to, and the support of the UN. We missed the opportunity to sort the problem out and are paying for it now.

.

Yes...
and yes.
Totally agree with second point.
First point... I also agree with... I just... hmm, I am not sure if I agree that Iran is the local power of the ME. Israel has far superior weaponry... and training. Iran are no joke. But, I dont know. It might be because I spent a lot of time in the Andes with a fair few ex Israeli military and have met exactly one Mujahadeen, but, those Israeli boys and girls can get up to some seriously scary high jinks when the need arises.

[Smurf]

I felt that we should have gone straight into Iraq and sorted out Saddam after the first Gulf war, we had good reason to, and the support of the UN.

Gotta disagree with that, Bush snr had a resolution from the UN to 'Use all force necessary' to implement the previous res 660 (dontcha just love the net :D ) which said Saddam should leave Kuwait.

Interestingly here's what he had to say when asked why he just didn't go ahead anyway

""Had we gone into Baghdad -- we could have done it, you guys could have done it, you could have been there in 48 hours -- and then what?

Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho? We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power — America in an Arab land — with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous"

I'm not sure but I think I read somewhere about some about a ballsed up invasion somewhere that sounded a bit like that :D

[philipMac]

Nah. They should have gone in and finished the job.
They told the Iraqies to rise up against Saddam, they told them they would be right in there behind them. And they completely didnt. They were already there, the had nothing more to do than get the place up and running, and you would have a very different middle east today.

Instead they just minced off back home. Big mistake IMO.

[Ed]

Nah. They should have gone in and finished the job.
They told the Iraqies to rise up against Saddam, they told them they would be right in there behind them. And they completely didnt. They were already there, the had nothing more to do than get the place up and running, and you would have a very different middle east today.

Instead they just minced off back home. Big mistake IMO.

I remember it vividly, all the anti-war protesters who reluctantly, very reluctantly, accepted that an independent Kuwait did have a right to exist and who were equally vocal that the US should drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and not go an inch over the border. Why the reluctance? I think because these self-serving people (generally the same who tie bits of coloured wool around security fences) despised the Emir, simply because he is very rich. So it was quite all right for a despotic and ruthless dictator to invade someone else's country to **** up their infrastructure and to hog their oil revenues, with grudging reluctance in accepting the restoration of normality.

Of course, like everyone else I speak with the benefit of hindsight, but yes of course it would have been better to sort the matter there and then. I don't really understand where you're coming from, Philip. You criticise the current war - oil is one of the reasons offered - but then say it should have been done in 1991/2.

You can't have it both ways.

[northwind]

So, his statement is pretty realistic in real life....


True, but he said it in a response to a mdeia question about weapons of mass destruction, and never actually answered the question :)

[Jelster]

So, his statement is pretty realistic in real life....


True, but he said it in a response to a mdeia question about weapons of mass destruction, and never actually answered the question :)

Well he's apolitician, what do you expect :lol:

.

[philipMac]

I don't really understand where you're coming from, Philip. You criticise the current war - oil is one of the reasons offered - but then say it should have been done in 1991/2.

You can't have it both ways.

:D
Yup. I criticise the current war. I think the gains are small, when compared to the cost.
I think that the war is being fought for money and oil. I think the last war was fought for money and oil. However, they gave the excuse that it was about Hussein's penchant for genocide, but I dont buy it. If there was no oil, Hussein's activities would possibly be scolded by the UN, and little would happen.

Now, I am not saying that the first Gulf war should not have happened. I think it was potentially at least, for the best. Genocide is not acceptable, and Hussein should not have been let away with it.

But, as if proof was needed, they didn't care in the slightest about the actual genocide, they cared about getting the oil back under control. It would have been easy, relative to the efforts that it is taking now, to push on to Baghdad. They promised the people if they rose up against Saddam, they would assist.
They didnt, they got the oil back running, they got Iraq out of Kuwait, they got their amigos in Kuwait happy again, and they left.

This war is different. Is what Hussein was doing over the last few years reason to kill 47 odd thousand civvies and 3K US troops and misc others? In reality he was losing control of the country slowly. There was no massive arms program, the spurious intel that Mossad and the US produced to quieten people down was at best simply wrong, parts of it were barefaced lies. He had nothing at all to do with the Sept 11th attacks.
And this war was always going to be a sh!tstorm. This was clear.

The US contracts some of the fighting out to external companies who are pro soldiers. To give you an idea of how clear that this was going to be brutal, I have been told that 70% of these pro soldiers just point blank turned the job down. These are the same guys that fought in Sierra Leone etc. They wouldnt touch Iraq. And there are huge numbers of them who accepted contracts are simply leaving.

Having Hussein out of the picture now is a good thing. But, its not worth that number of corpses. Had they pushed on the first time, even tried, more people would have died, fair enough. But, if it all went badly wrong on them, they can just leave. Like they were going to do anyway.
Instead they just almost won the war, left, and starved the place for years, leaving Hussein there to tell everyone how bad the west is.