Don Rumsfeld
Via Kevin Drum, Fred Kaplan on Don Rumsfeld’s efforts at rehabilitation:
During his six years as defense secretary, Rumsfeld famously wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of memos to subordinates they fell so rapidly from on high that his aides called them “snowflakes.” According to several officials, many of these snowflakes contradicted one another; he seemed to be staking out several positions on key issues so that he could later claim that he’d taken the right side. In his forthcoming memoirs, he will no doubt quote chapter and verse from just the right snowflakes. Readers, be forewarned he’s blotting out the full storm.
Indeed. Relatedly, I reviewed Doug Feith’s book. The difference, though, is that I think Feith is much more dimwitted which leads to a different brand of dishonesty.
32 Responses to “Don Rumsfeld”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 26th, 2008 at 8:24 am
So do you concur that Feith’s book, along with Liberal Fascism should’ve been a contender for a National Book Award?
November 26th, 2008 at 8:32 am
It is just me or does Doug Feith give striking resemblance to the scum of the earth?
November 26th, 2008 at 8:39 am
The utter contempt these people have for the American public is so enormous, I can’t even respond. It’s like the Eddie Izzard bit about Pol Pot and Stalin as compared to the lowly murderer.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I saw Feith in DC yesterday. Fairly scum-like.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I hope you didn’t pay for the book. We don’t need to give these folks any additional encouraging. Plus, support our local libraries.
I think Feith’s book would be 813.## or something like that.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:44 am
You know, Donald Rumsfeld might have made a decent peacetime Secretary of Defense. Good administrator. That took some stones to scrap the Paladin.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Rumsfeld was wrong to promote the war in Iraq but right in his strategy, namely to remove the tyrant and then leave. Americans have an uncanny faith in our ability to control world events. Even now, after years of the fiasco that is Iraq, we have all these experts telling us that, if only the President had not listened to Rumsfeld and instead had listened to Patreus and his other advisors and sent more troops, we would have “won” the war years ago. Never mind that Iraq is made up of two conflicting religious groups with grievances stretching back hundreds of years. Never mind that the majority Shia have suffered for years under the minority Sunni. Never mind that removing the tyrant would unleash all that pent-up anger and ethnic resentment. I suspect Rumsfeld knew that removing the tyrant would lead to the ethnic violence and chaos that followed but nevertheless supported removal as long the US troops left quickly, leaving the Iraqis to resolve (in a very deadly manner) their own differences, something that was going to occur whether the US troops stayed or left. As it happened, the US troops stayed and suffered the consequences of being in the middle of an ethnic war. Of course, we Americans prefer to believe that the “surge” worked and we “won” the war.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Rumsfeld was just getting in front of the unk-unks
November 26th, 2008 at 10:49 am
It is a fair bet that if the Administration had presented Congress and the American people with a realistic sense of what it would cost to invade and then actually occupy Iraq, they may not have gotten enough support for going to war.
True enough, but I think this implicitly lets Congress off the hook too much. It may very well be that Congress didn’t have access to sufficient facts to understand how weak Bush’s WMD case was, but there was absolutely no shortage of public information as to what the likely consequences of Saddam’s removal would be. Anyone with half a brain could have and should have known that the whole “greeted with rose petals” line was horseshit from the get-go and that chaos was the likely outcome.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am
DTM,
Rumsfeld wasn’t completely wrong about force structure. The military does need to be more nimble. Now, that strategy about what to do with a such a military, that’s another matter, but that’s why I wrote “peactime Secretary of Defense.”
Also, let’s not forget Ahmed Chalabi. These idiots actually thought they were going to march him in Baghdad like DeGaulle, install him in power, and watch as he smoothly assumed the power of the existing Iraqi state.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I watched Fieth’s interview on the Daily Show a while back. What amazed me was his basic argument on the Iraq War: the administration was very good at publicizing and communicating those facts and arguments which supported their case, but it just so happens that they dropped the ball when communicating caveats, difficulties, and contrary evidence.
It’s just like my life, where I’m really good at sweet-talking women into bed, but – for whatever reason – I’m terrible at telling them that I have crabs.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Joe from Lowell (#6):
Rumsfeld was a peacetime Defense Secretary when he took the job in 2001, and we all saw how well that panned out.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 12th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 14th, 2009 at 5:28 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
xanax
March 17th, 2009 at 2:29 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:25 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:19 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Excellent site, It was pleasant to me. viagra