Donald Rumsfeld

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“Mrs. Clinton Is A Known Known”

June 23, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I’m disappointed a relatively sober-minded person like James Baker can’t see past partisanship in regards to Donald Trump, Daddy Warbucks as an aspiring war criminal, but it’s no surprise Donald Rumsfeld supports the odious GOP nominee.

Rumsfeld, and unmitigated disaster as W’s Defense Secretary (Trump agrees), is still using his bullshit fog-of-war lexicon of obfuscation, deeming Trump a “known unknown,” and arguing Hillary should be indicted, a comment he makes without a seeming shred of self-awareness of the piles of dead bodies that were needlessly rendered such by both his willful actions and gross incompetence. 

From David Martosko at the Daily Mail:

An animated Rumsfeld, 83, was even more eager to talk about the Trump phenomenon, saying that a year ago ‘you could count on one hand’ the number of people who thought he would be the GOP nominee.

While the former defense secretary said he and Trump have never met, he agrees with the real estate tycoon about what Trump calls the potential for a ‘Trojan horse’ infiltration of terrorists among the Syrian refugees whom the Obama administration has been resettling in the U.S.

‘He’s absolutely right,’ he said. ‘Anyone who thinks the radical Islamists are not going to try to utilize every venue they can find to infiltrate in the United States, and in western European countries, to achieve their goals – these people just don’t get it.’ …

Rumsfeld framed the choice between Clinton and Trump in terms political historians will find familiar, relying on the words he used in 2002 to describe questions about the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to spot weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“Mrs. Clinton is a known known. Donald Trump is a known unknown who’s a recent entry into the equation,’ he said, attributing the insight to his wife.

‘And I am a lot more comfortable with a known unknown, who I will support, than with a known known who is unacceptable.’•

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“Mr. Rumsfeld Can’t Code”

January 24, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responds to a question as he defends President Bush's proposed $439.3 billion defense budget for 2007 during his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. Beyond budget matters, Rumsfeld told the panel that the U.S. military must continue to change in order to defend the nation against enemy terrorists who could acquire a nuclear weapon or launch a chemical attack against a major U.S. city. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Original Filename: RUMSFELD_DCSA106.jpg

Strategy would not seem to be Donald Rumsfeld’s strong suit.

Despite that, the former Dubya Defense Secretary marshaled his forces and created an app for a strategic video game called “Churchill Solitaire,” based on actual card game played incessantly during WWII by the British Prime Minister. If you’re picturing an ill-tempered, computer-illiterate senior barking orders into a Dictaphone, then you’ve already figured out Rumsfeld’s creative process. At least tens of thousands of people were not needlessly killed during the making of the app.

From Julian E. Barnes at the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Rumsfeld can’t code. He doesn’t much even use a computer. But he guided his young digitally minded associates who assembled the videogame with the same method he used to rule the Pentagon—a flurry of memos called snowflakes.

As a result, “Churchill Solitaire” is likely the only videogame developed by an 83-year-old man using a Dictaphone to record memos for the programmers.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld was known for not mincing words with his memos. Age hasn’t mellowed him.

“We need to do a better job on these later versions. They just get new glitches,” reads one note from Mr. Rumsfeld. “[W]e ought to find some way we can achieve steady improvement instead of simply making new glitches.”

Other notes were arguably more constructive, if still sharply worded.

“Instead of capturing history, it is getting a bit artsy,” he wrote in one snowflake in which he suggested ways to make the game better evoke Churchill—including scenes from World War II and quotes from the prime minister, changes that made it into the final game.•

______________________

“One of the strangest interviews I’ve ever done.”

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“You Cannot Be Serious”

September 16, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

From a new interview about Syria that Spiegel conducted with Donald Rumsfeld, who sees the perils of American intervention but maintains a capacious blind spot for himself:

“Spiegel: 

Why did Obama have such big problems gaining the support of other countries for a military strike?

Donald Rumsfeld: 

I believe the reason he has had difficulty gaining support both in the US and from other countries is because he has not explained what he hopes to do, what the mission would be and what he hopes to accomplish. To gain support in our Congress and from other nations requires clarity, an acceptable mission and an explicit outcome.

Spiegel: 

You cannot be serious. George W. Bush, who you served as Secretary of Defense, may have been clear about what he wanted, but most Americans now see the wars he started as being misguided. That would seem to be the real reason that the willingness in the US and the rest of the world to go to war is so low.

Donald Rumsfeld: 

Such sentiments among Americans are hardly a new phenomenon. After World War I, for example, there was widespread war weariness and opposition to the US getting involved in World War II. Americans were reluctant and didn’t want to go to war again in Europe. Similarly, there was no appetite for the Korean War in the United States, or the Vietnam War.

Spiegel: 

From the American perspective, World War II was a noble engagement that paid off in the long run. The same can hardly be said of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Donald Rumsfeld:  

To be sure, the outcomes in Afghanistan and Iraq are uncertain. But, if you look closely, schools are open, they have a free press, have drafted a constitution and have had free elections. Afghanistan was torn after years of occupation by the Soviets, a long civil war and the vicious reign of the Taliban. Today, the people there at least have a chance for a better life. So too in Iraq, with the Butcher of Baghdad gone, a man who used chemical weapons against his own people, as well as his neighbors.

Spiegel: 

That sounds almost cynical given the thousands of people who lost their lives and billions of dollars those wars cost. And we still cannot be sure that these countries have a better future. But the US is now leaving them to their own devices.

Donald Rumsfeld: 

Call it what you will, but my view is that we aren’t a country that can go into another nation and do nation building. That’s up to the people in those countries. There are people in the United States who think we do have the ability to nation build. I personally do not. We can help, to be sure, but they will need to do it in their own way.”

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“Words Become For Rumsfeld His Own Way To Regain Control Over Reality And History”

September 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Politics | Permalink

Fat-necked babyhead Karl Rove spent a good part of Sunday excoriating the President for inching backwards from his line in the sand on Syria, but I’m glad Obama retreated if only a little. I know he doesn’t want a Rwanda to happen on his watch, but it’s difficult to bomb a country into a safer place. Not impossible, but difficult. Obama did what responsible adults do when they feel emotions getting the best of them: They doubt. And then perhaps they proceed or maybe they realize that strength isn’t only in being inflexible, the way JFK did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev sure seemed forceful when banging his shoe on a table, but even if he won a day or two with bluster, he didn’t win the history books. Certitude alone doesn’t do that.

Doubt was in short supply when Rove’s candidate, President George W. Bush, was in office. He and his inner circle knew that Iraq had WMDs, and there was no bending their spines of steel. So many people died because they had no doubt. In Errol Morris’ new Donald Rumsfeld documentary, the former Secretary of Defense still doesn’t question his decisions. From Gregg Kilday’s Hollywood Reporter interview with Morris about Rumsfeld’s desire to own the narrative even though the facts say he got owned:

“Hollywood Reporter:

You eventually interviewed him for 33 hours.

Errol Morris:

Over 11 separate days, four separate trips to Boston. We filmed in a studio in Allston over the course of a little bit more than a year.

Hollywood Reporter:

And you had him read his memos as part of the interview?

Errol Morris:

Yes, the memos are memos that he shared with us. I don’t believe they were ever available before we started talking with him. I sometimes describe it as a kind of history from the inside out rather than the other way around. What was so fascinating and still is fascinating about the memos is that they came from [various] periods, whether it was the Ford Administration or his role as an ambassador-at-large in the Middle East during the Reagan Administration and during his tenure as secretary of defense for George W. Bush. They also reflect how he wants other people to see him. They are complex. It gives some kind of insight into what he was thinking, how he wanted to present himself to others, how he wanted to present himself to history. I think there are a lot of complicated things going on that fascinated me and still fascinate me. For a lot of people when you make a movie, you’re supposed to come away with definite answers about things. I’m not sure that is my M.O. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is not.

Hollywood Reporter:

He seems strangely obsessed with the definition of words.

Errol Morris:

I’ll tell you how I interpret it. When we think of words and the definition of words, I immediately think of George Orwell because he wrote so extensively about it. Orwell was obsessed with language and how language could be used to manipulate people. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. It’s something stranger. Words become for Rumsfeld his own way to regain control over reality and history as he feels it slipping away. I’m not sure I’m even characterizing it correctly either, but there’s something strange and powerful about it. If somehow he gets the right word or the right definition of words, everything will be OK. America will win the war in Iraq, the insurgents will vanish. It’s all a problem of vocabulary.”

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“We Have Discussed Iraq On A Number Of Occasions”

August 29, 2013 in Film, Politics, Videos | Permalink

Here’s the first trailer from the new Errol Morris doc about Donald Rumsfeld.

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Some Thoughts About The Furor Surrounding President Obama’s Campaign Ad About Bin Laden

May 1, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Swims with the fishes.

•In regards Obama questioning whether Mitt Romney would have made the call to enter Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden, it’s based on factual statements that Romney made which were not taken out of context.

•We need to stop acting like the murder of bin Laden was a sacred event. It was a political and military decision to eliminate a mass murderer. Save the sacred feelings for the victims of 9/11.

•If the decision had gone badly, it would have been politicized to the hilt by the GOP, including Romney. The Democrats would have been branded weak on defense as they have been for more than 40 years.

•It’s not like the GOP didn’t do its own–and very undeserved–victory lap over bin Laden’s killing. Members of the Bush Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice) came out of the woodwork to try to claim credit.

•You could argue that Obama is hanging his “Mission Accomplished” banner with the ad, except that the mission actually was accomplished. Maybe it seems boastful, but it is accurate.

•It’s hilarious that draft-dodging members of a party that Swiftboated an Army veteran like John Kerry are now crying foul over being called out on being less forceful on military matters.

•If Arianna Huffington wants to better understand the definition of “despicable,” she should recall how she allowed Jenny McCarthy to use the Huffington Post as a platform to repeatedly frighten parents about immunizing their children. And even after it was proven that those charges were linked to junk science, there was still no retraction or apology. Now that’s despicable.•

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