Oh, yes, poor Rummy, what a victim. What the hell did he think when he granted an interview to Al-Jazeera? He really is an arrogant ass — who owes the nation and our brave men and women in uniform, including those who’ve lost limbs, and who’ve frankly lost their minds, a HUGE APOLOGY!  Kind of sad actually, that Al-Jazeera is only network covering the grassroots revolution, known as Occupy Wall Street. Can’t wait to march tomorrow — with the Marines!! Hooyah!

Very unprofessional of the Al-Jazeera reporter!

“Have you stopped beating your wife?”  Liberal/biased media.

I’m SURE they could use you in the streets of Egypt, Libya or Syria, Ilene. 

What, pray tell, are you children “occupying Wall Street” for? 

Maybe we should only go to war when we have clear objectives and plan, with a path to victory.

It’s like we learned nothing from Viet Nam.

Restructure the Financial System, not the Capitalist System!
These Morons marching on Wall Street don’t have a clue!

Redact the COMPENSATION! – This way the money goes to people, and not Washington!!

David Frost he’s not.

Crawl back under your rock , you filthy ,nasty old excuse for a bag of wind .

You need help , but who cares ?

Al-Jazeera interviewer: “Are you, or have you ever been a Jew or a Zionist, and do you deny you aren’t?”

Al-Jazeera interviewer: “What do you think of Tommy Christopher’s writings?”

Rumsfeld is prob the slickest politician I have ever seen. Can anyone hold a candle to Rumsfeld in that department? I doubt it, maybe Kissinger.

Make sure when the police approach you and ask you to disperse peacefully, you put up a good fight….lol

LOL…Al-Jazeera was very kind considering Bush targeted and KILLED Al Jazeera reporters

Someone should prosecute him in international courts. Bring Cheney and Bush too.

Don’t forget Obama and his administration.

Obama Campaign Says GOP Blocking Jobs Bill — After Reid Blocks Jobs Bill!

Haha, I think he spent too much time as a hardball contributor.

I’d impeach Obama not prosecute him in court. He hasnt done as much as the Bush Admin

That war criminal couldn’t give anyone a straight answer about anything.  

“It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months” -Rumsfeld

I think you have forgotten One of Bill Clinton’s nicknames. Slick Willy!! He was by far the slickest.

So why would Rumsfeld have ever sat down with an al Jazeera reporter in the first place?  You know there’d be nothing but antagonism.

arrest this asshole and throw him in jail

i hope rumsfeld gets cancer, rots in prison, and then rots in eternal damnation

Oh my word, he was “haranguing” poor Don Rumsfeld, that’ll make the Iraqi’s feel better.

Oh good God – will these idiots ever just grow up, face facts, and deal with the truth?  Honestly, this so-called “reporter” is nothing but another lefty idiot who wouldn’t can’t accept real victories, real men, with real vision.

Killing innocent Iraqi’s is an MSNBC line, so is it any wonder that this article is highted here instead of say:  Holder perjers himself to Congress, or anything like that.

Go Rummy, tell the lian sack of sh!t so-called journalist to stuff it; what a dick.

Stop rotting in your trailer in Tampon and get out and experience life a little.  Nothing like a fat shut-in whining about everyone that disagrees with one of her far right-wing buffoon Gods.  Put the vodka down and change your clothes.  You’re stinking up the place.

Darlaloon, sounding like a typical hateful lefty.

The ahole was trying to pull a Bashir and hammer away his preconceived narrative with righteous indignation.  He wouldn’t let  Rumsfeld answer because he didn’t want Rumsfeld’s answer, he wanted his own questions to be the answer and whatever sounds came out of Rumsfeld’s mouth to only be the reaction to his question/answer.

Too bad Rummy didn’t punch the jerk in the mouth, would have made his questions much more interesting seeing his lip swell up and blood drip down his chin.  He still would have been the aggressor, but at least he would have had his ass kicked.  Rumsfeld handled himself with class, as always.

It must kill the liberals to see the Obama administration continue so many of the Bush administration war on terror policies.  They jumped up and down over waterboarding terrorists.  Today Obama just has them killed.

Yeah, over 2000 suspects obliterated by the judge, jury and hangman known as Barry H. Obama and you and the rest of you dimwits still break out the old ‘war criminals bullshit about President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Whose the war criminal now asshole?

President George W. Bush didn’t kill enough of ‘em.

No, really, the “killing innocent Iraqi’s” line is straight out of the rhetoric of American’s enemies and the radical left.

…risk of life and limb…

More than just two words that start with “L.”  Paired together, it’s actually a idiom – and a concept with meaning.  Not that most those who propose, in backing the wall street protests, the destruction of ordered society would actually understand the relationship…

The assassination of an American citizen, no less, one of many on an unpublicized list.

“Double standard” no longer applies as a a concept that covers today’s leftists.  For a good lot of them, their stated ideology and public stances are out and out lies – a “big lie told often enough” to disguise their totalitarian sympathies.

In other news, we finally did get Saddam Hussein.  You know – the person of record as the “Butcher of Baghdad” who ACTUALLY deserves your hatred and scorn.

down vote

obama is partly a war criminal, too

but obama didn’t come up with the brilliant idea to invade iraq, or afghanistan
for that matter, in the first place.  and he also never authorized torture or wiretapping.

in fact, his very first day in office, he stopped torturing.

he’s continued wiretapping, but it is now legal, so he’s technically not a criminal.

so, i’d like to focus on the very worst of the criminals FIRST, ok?  asshole?

oh, you mean saddam “i have no weapons” hussein? 

“hateful”   =  ”thinks those who’s epic criminal negligence shouldn’t go unpunished”

What I got from this is he’s not comfortable being confronted with things he’s not sure about.

The problem is that everyone seems to learned a different lesson.  For some, it was simply “don’t engage in a land war in Asia.”

The larger problem, of course, is this country’s inculcated predisposition towards “total war;” the notion that as a state we’re somehow served by totally uprooting the pre-existing power structure or even the dominant society of those we fight, instead of simply addressing the limited end which caused our interests to conflict.

If one were to seriously investigate the larger picture, we’ve never been served well by the total war philosophy, even in those cases accepted by most.  For instance, it would have been far preferable to us to have negotiated an earlier peace with Japan.  Failing that, the Kuomintang government was absolutely preoccupied with fighting Japanese land armies numbering in the millions years longer than they otherwise might have – which allowed Mao’s communists to survive, rally, gain in strength and ultimately come out victorious against Chiang Kai-shek depleted strength.  Not to mention that the entire Korean war could have been avoided – and the peninsula need not have been divided – but for FDR unnecessarily (in the end) requesting at the Tehran and Yalta conferences a Soviet Far East offensive knowing Japan would fight to avoid unconditional surrender.

Similarly, our various declarations for unconditional surrender gave those in Germany who otherwise might’ve been moved to undermine Hitler’s rule and remove him no recourse but to support his administration and war effort – in the end, failing the ability to cover ground quicker than the Soviets, half of Europe was doomed to exist for 45 years under an oppressive system of governance.

Total war is a simplistic solution with far to many unintended consequences to manage effectively.

“hateful” = wishing sickness and damnation on public people for their policies.

I’m repeatedly forced to verify your name, just so you know, so tempting is it to misinterpret when taking into consideration the character of your postings.  I could almost swear you advertise yourself as a loon.

You idiot!! This reporter should be fired from Al jazeera, he does not have the professionalism to hide his bias and hate, gimmi a break!! And im no fan of Rummy whatsoever.

I think they should lock Rummy up for war crimes.  

Yeah…what’s it like to have a press corps that isn’t boot licking the heels of the powerful? Is it because they don’t pimp Axe Body spray while everybody is jacked-up on the next episode of Glee or Dancing with the Stars?

God Bless this nation and its plutocrat-loving press corp.

It takes an Al-Jazeera reporter to take on Satan’s smug little cousin…

That’s the one.  You know – the one who didn’t want anyone to know he didn’t have WMD’s anymore so that he could continue to oppress and terrorize his own populace.

You people of the twisted, beyond-all-hope modern left and your characterizations makes me wonder if you have statues of Baghdad Bob in your living rooms.

After seeing this guy interview I see why we would target Al Jazeera Reporters. What an idiot! Dont even know why a man such a Rumsfeld who has done so much for this country give them the time of day!

Your glorious leader just assassinated an American citizen.  But you can’t see 2 inches past your bizaro world leftist politics.

Who’s your favorite NASCAR driver?

how about Obama killing Americans without due process? I say that is a bigger crime then anything Bush has done. 

Very bad journalism. Highly UNprofessional! Rummy should have stopped it immediately!

Rummy, on the other hand, deserves this kind of questions because this unjust war demolished the image of America in the world, killed thousands of innocent Iraqis, thousands of American soldiers died, and it ruined the American tax-payers… 

Stooge! Let me school ‘ya because it’s obvious you’re just another left-wing dumbfuck in need of some serious facts. Rendition continues to this day. You OK wit ‘dat punk?

You wont see that story on this site. or anything about Eric Holder lying to congress either! No Mediate is more in line with the Daily Show as their news source! 

Sec. Rumsfeld was correct to reject the flimsy, flawed and biased premises of this interviewer’s questions. The US military went into Iraq with the fewest number of troops they thought they needed to get the job done and went to the greatest lengths to leave the smallest footprint possible. They went out of their way not only to avoid civilian casualties, they also tried to leave other buildings, property and even livestock unharmed.

During the 30ish years Hussein was the dictator in Iraq, it is conservatively estimated that he killed a million Iraqis just to keep “order.” That’s just over 30k annually. By comparison, the number of people who have been killed by US troops, terrorists, accidents, illness, old age and natural causes since the war began in 2003 is around 200k. Most of those people were randomly murdered by terrorist IEDs. Still, that’s about 25k a year and the death toll is dropping. Even during the most violent periods of the war, Iraq was a safer place under US “occupation” than it ever was with Sadaam and his psychotic sons at the helm. The world is a better place with them gone.

Typical Liberial! lol people like yourself cant help yourself on releasing the true inner ugliness! that is why your called a loony left wing nut job! Thank God our world does not have a lot of your types!

You really think the Iraq war was properly administered during Bush?

You really think Rumsfeld’s “light and fast” philosophy of war suited Iraq, a philosophy that he was pushing before 9/11, that he tried to foist upon this conflict?

You really think that there was a climate that allowed for different opinions about the administration of the Iraq war?

You really think that nobody wanted more troops?

You really think Rumsfeld is classy?

You really think invading a nation and wasting all that money and blood to kill one guy was worth it?

You really think that Obamacare was a waste of money (my assumption of your views) but Iraq–which was kept of the books–was money well spent?

What I got from it was exactly what one ought to have – that when the reporter insists that Rumsfeld give him a straight answer, he implicitly suggests that Rumsfeld is lying as a matter of course.

That’s beyond the tenants of aggressively pursuing a line of questioning, that’s advocacy of a narrative in substitution for it.  About what I expect from that channel.

Waterboarding has in fact saved many American lives! This is proven and what Obama is using as info… the Bush administration got! 

Thats why our country is so hated in the world…

rumsfeld actually *caused* sickness and damnation

i did no such thing

it committed treason but I still believe he deserved a trial..no way bush is far worse when it comes this

if you check my posts on that particular thread (obama’s assassination), you’ll noticed
that i was staunchly OPPOSED

no i’m not

HAHA…still don’t know what the Bush Admin has done?

waterboarding hasn’t saved a single life

there is NO evidence to prove that it has

if you have it, please link to it

even if it HAS saved lives, it doesn’t matter

waterboarding is ILLEGAL under two international treaties we have signed

oh shut up

oh, so you have evidence that saddam had weapons?

by all means, show me the evidence

the minimum estimate of innocent iraqi deaths is 100,000

other sources say close to 1,000,000

your thoughts?

so you’re upset with the assassination

but yet you’re staunch defender of the 4 trillion dollar iraq war?

they were anything but difficult questions

duh

i think he did stop the interview

none of these were stated goals prior to the invasion

but that’s a nice, albeit pathetic, attempt at historical revision

aces, you f*cking pathetic little authoritarian!

There’s a special place in hell for people like you and nazi’s and terrorists and KKK members :)

Having read Tina’s posts for some time now, I feel she most likely favors Dick Trickle.

Seriously, it’s kind of sad, they’re like Rumsfeld they have no concept that his decisions pretty much ended the lives of over 100,000 people and we got NOTHING from it. Rumsfeld looks more pathetic each time I see him, he should stay out of the public. 

amazing, norcalsister, an unrepentant conservative OPPOSES obama’s aggressive
anti-terror strategy……but sees no problem in bush’s precedent-demolishing,
scorched earth, across-the-board illegality

With these people, they have no idea what they’re talking about, they just wait to hear what the internet is saying so they can parrot it. 

nice cut ‘n paste job there

but you will see hank williams coverage

obviously a liberal thing (lol)

why?

he has sat down with them before, you know

Haha, Bill Clinton was a pimp! Dude got the most POOSEY(XD) in the White house before JFK, JFK is the all time liberal pimp though.

Liberal liberal

Its because being a terrorist or connected to AL Queda is something common not looked down on with AL Jazeera reporter resumes. 

http://articles.cnn.com/2003-09-05/world/spain.alqaeda_1_abu-dahdah-al-jazeera-tv-qaeda?_s=PM:WORLD

Police have arrested a correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV
at his home in southern Spain accusing him of having links to the al
Qaeda terrorist group.
Authorities believe that Tayseer Allouni
– who interviewed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden nearly two years ago
– provided support for two suspected members of the group, a Spanish
court official told CNN.
Allouni is expected to appear in Madrid’s National Court on Monday, the official said.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wikileaks-innocent-journalist-al-qaeda-jihadist-or-both_558472.html

intelligence analysts at Guantanamo and other
foreign governments, sees Hajj as a longtime extremist and al Qaeda
member who used his job at Al Jazeera as a cover for his more nefarious
activities.

A
recently leaked assessment of Hajj, authored by American analysts at
Guantanamo, has been used to buttress the first version of Hajj’s
story. The authors of the assessment noted that Hajj was transferred to
Cuba, in part, because American officials had suspicions about Al
Jazeera’s “newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo, and
Afghanistan, including the network’s acquisition of a video of [Osama
bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with” bin Laden. (This was just
one of five reasons Hajj was transferred to Guantanamo, according to
the document.)

The same document notes that analysts believed
Hajj had information about Al Jazeera’s “associations with al-Qaida
leaders and activities in support of Islamic militant groups.”

How about you put both bush and Obama on trial at the same time?

Obama could wear his Nobel peace prize.  ANd what exactly did he win that for???? ;)

one million ….so there must be mass graves????

more money was spent by Obama in his first 90 days on the unstimulating, stimulus then was spent on 8 years of war in Iraq under Bush. 

200,000 per job created is smart allocation of resources??

I didn’t say they were the stated goals, only that they were some of the quantified results. You have, once again, failed the reading comprehension portion of the exam.

The Iraq war was 800 billion – about the size of Bush’s total deficit. Add Afghanistan and the price rises to 1.3 trillion – about the same as the deficit during Obama’s first year as President. You really don’t care about facts at all, do you?

I’m so happy that we only managed to kill a fifth as many civilians in Iraq

I think Darladoon understood your posting with absolute precision: you are a proud apologist for murder, which makes you pretty typical among the right wing crawlers of this site.

I think Darladoon understood your posting with absolute precision: you are a proud apologist for murder, which makes you pretty typical among the right wing crawlers of this site.

Rumsfeld seems unaware that people don’t merely disagree with him — they rightly consider him a war criminal who should be in front of a tribunal at The Hague, preferably in chains.

If he expects “elder statesman” treatment from interviewers, he’s going to be disappointed. Since clearing his name is flatly impossible, I’d suggest to him that he simply shut up.

Rumsfeld seems unaware that people don’t merely disagree with him — they rightly consider him a war criminal who should be in front of a tribunal at The Hague, preferably in chains.

If he expects “elder statesman” treatment from interviewers, he’s going to be disappointed. Since clearing his name is flatly impossible, I’d suggest to him that he simply shut up.

In 1990 they had over 250,000 troops in the first gulf war.  Many commanders were saying that we didn’t have enough troops leaving them exposed which resulted in more causalities.  General Shinseki was forced down because he recommended a lot more troops.   Rumsfeld didn’t like listening to his generals.  

Its close to a million Iraq that lost their lives because of the war.  I know you like sticking up for the Bush Admin. but you’re not living in reality.  

Can you provide a link to any source besides your own brain that claims a million dead civilians? The largest estimate I’ve seen was 275k and was widely and thoroughly debunked due to idiotic flaws in the survey sample and methodology. The “scientists” who did the study went to the most violent places, knocked on every door, asked if the people there knew of anyone who had died, counted each affirmative answer as a unique casualty and then extrapolated their data out according to the population of the entire country. If five people in one house said they knew of a civilian death, even if they were all referring to the same person, that death was counted five times.

I live in a suburb that has had one murder in the past decade. It happened to be just down the street from my house. If the same method was used here, the pollsters would have gone down my street a week after the murder and, when everyone polled said they did know of a person who had been murdered, after extrapolating the data, there would have been more murders, statistically speaking, than the total population of the city. As I said before, the methodology was complete idiocy.

Because you are full of hate for all things Bush administration, I’m sure you blame each of those civilian deaths on the US military and, by extension, President Bush, despite the fact that 99%+ of those deaths were caused by terrorists. Nobody has less regard for the lives of Muslims than other Muslims.

Can you provide a link to any source besides your own brain that claims a million dead civilians? The largest estimate I’ve seen was 275k and was widely and thoroughly debunked due to idiotic flaws in the survey sample and methodology. The “scientists” who did the study went to the most violent places, knocked on every door, asked if the people there knew of anyone who had died, counted each affirmative answer as a unique casualty and then extrapolated their data out according to the population of the entire country. If five people in one house said they knew of a civilian death, even if they were all referring to the same person, that death was counted five times.

I live in a suburb that has had one murder in the past decade. It happened to be just down the street from my house. If the same method was used here, the pollsters would have gone down my street a week after the murder and, when everyone polled said they did know of a person who had been murdered, after extrapolating the data, there would have been more murders, statistically speaking, than the total population of the city. As I said before, the methodology was complete idiocy.

Because you are full of hate for all things Bush administration, I’m sure you blame each of those civilian deaths on the US military and, by extension, President Bush, despite the fact that 99%+ of those deaths were caused by terrorists. Nobody has less regard for the lives of Muslims than other Muslims.

Interviewee’s Rule No. 17: If you provide no straight answer, expect to be pressed for a straight answer.

Once again, Rumsfeld has proven his profound ignorance of, and dissociation from, reality.

Obama’s killing (putative) terrorists via drone isn’t quite comparable to state-ordered torture. One might be justifiable as an act of war while the other is a violation of our national honor.

Nevertheless, his failure to reject the Bush policies more comprehensively is clearly a blot on Obama’s record.

Rumsfield should be rotting in a jail cell side-by-side with Cheney.

The Congressional Budget Office (a more credible source than you) says the cost for the Iraq war will be in the range of 2.4 trillion dollars by 2017, not including additional medical costs borne by the VA and by individual soldiers and their families. Economist Joseph Stiglitz (also more credible than you) sets a conservative figure of 3 trillion, with the actual likely to be much higher. His number also excludes vets and the costs to Iraq and the rest of the world.

That 4 trillion figure is looking more likely all the time.

But those would be “facts” — about which you’re happy to be snide without actually being accurate.

It would also be classic Rumsfeld. Don’t like reality? Hurt somebody. At least he’s consistent.

As are his bottom-feeding fans.

I never liked Rumsfield but I dispise this A§§wipe muslim interviewer even more!  Screw Al Jazeera and every Satan Worshiping Muslim Pig on Earth!  Rumsfield had every right not bowing to their level or answer such a Stupid question. 

I was going to respond to TTampa, and then I asked myself, what good would it do? Any nit who considers Iraq a “real victory” is clearly beyond redemption.

Only 1,000,000!  I was hoping the toll would be much higher than that!  A dead Muzzie is a good muzzie, as we all know.

Lying about the methodology of studies you reject is not actually very convincing. Lying about something so easily checked suggests that you’re a fool, as well as an apologist for murder. Do you have any other despicable practices you’d like to share with us?

The study you are slagging — by the medical journal Lancet (which incidentally means you can remove the quotation marks from the word “scientists,” since they were, in fact, actual scientists) — was indeed a door-to-door study, but respondents were requested to provide a death certificate to validate their reports. 92% of the deaths were confirmed in this manner. (This particular study was around 600,000 war-related civilian deaths.)

We stormed into Iraq on a lie, trashed the place, and stood back while criminals and terrorists tore down or stole everything that was left. Yes, we bear the responsibility.

There are millions and millions of us who consider Rumsfeld a monster and people like you fools. In fact, that’s the predominant opinion worldwide.

You are outnumbered. Reality is displaying its well-known “liberial” bias.

I guarantee darladoon didn’t understand because she understands so little.

If I was an apologist for murder, I would have supported the Hussein
regime because his million murders sure did keep the peace. He was an
evil man and Iraq is a better place with him gone.

Terrorists and anyone else who murders an innocent are evil. Because they came to Iraq to fight against the formation of of a democratic state and made it the central front in their global jihad, tens of thousands more of them are dead than would have been had the front remained in Afghanistan where the terrain is much more harsh. You and your ilk count them among the innocents they killed and only see evil in deaths you believe are caused by the US military.

The US military didn’t bring the terrorists to Iraq. They chose to come on their own and went through great difficulty and expense to get there. Each one of them is responsible for each murder he committed. Nobody on either side of the political aisle predicted this would be the case. There were predictions of a civil war but not of a foreign-led insurgency. You and yours saw it as an opportunity to smear the Bush administration and the troops (never let a crisis go to waste) and tried to look smart by saying, “I always said they shouldn’t have gone.” The fact is, the Iraq war resolution passed with broad, bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. Very few with any say in the matter actually believed we shouldn’t have gone.

Take some time to educate yourself (like that would ever happen) and you will find that, despite all the death you seem to believe our military has dealt, Iraqis run TO our troops when the shooting breaks out or there’s an explosion. Wouldn’t they run the other way if our guys were truly running around, murdering civilians willy-nilly as you seem to believe? Of course, linear though was never a strong point for anyone on the left, so you can go on believing whatever you choose despite all the contrary evidence. Please know that you and darladoon both have my pity.
 

I keep seeing leftists posting this claim of a million dead Iraqi civilians, but I can’t find a single link that shows more than 120k civilians and about 40-50k terrorists/insurgents. Can you please provide a link? Kos doesn’t count.

This phony finally face a journalist that will ask him tough question and he bailed out. Says a lot about the American media for giving them a pass pre and post Iraq. 

This phony finally face a journalist that will ask him tough question and he bailed out. Says a lot about the American media for giving them a pass pre and post Iraq. 

And that right there is why 2001-2006 was 2001-2006. Just go back on Hannity, mr. secretary, and learn never to do interviews on actual news channels, they ask actual investigative journalistic questions

HYPOCRITE!  Where is the outrage toward Eric Holder, who lied to Congress about when he heard of “Fast and Furious” and hesitates to appoint an Outside Counsel.  Fast and Furious also caused the death of many innocents as well as at least 2 FBI agents, all thanks to the bungling of the Holder Justice Department.

And now that CBS has exposed Holder, the White House and Justice Dept. are yelling and screaming at the reporter for uncovering their lies!  Do the Democrats have ANY honor?  They should demand the appointment of Outside Counsel, just as they did for Scooter Libby or John Ashcroft or AG Gonzales.  Oh..wait..they were Republicans and therefore fair game.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbs-news-reporter-says-white-house-screamed-swore-her-over-fast-and-furious_595011.html

Utter nonsense.  And your proof is??????

No, our country is hated because we have been the most prosperous and influential country in the world.  However, that no longer is true.  Just watch when eventually happens to China.  Only China has different ways of dealing with opposition than we do, and it won’t be pretty.

Now don’t confuse the Liberals with facts.  They don’t like it and will call you vile names, their chief weapon.

Your name fits you exactly…talk about hyperbole.  It explains your posts throughout this site.

You’ve got that backward.  It’s Al Jazeera who is Satan’s cousin, who continually bootlicks Al Qaeda.

Taking out Hussein was entirely optional. The world is full of evil men, and yet America doesn’t try to punish them all. It was deeply immoral and profoundly unwise to invade a sovereign nation on the flimsy excuses, bad data, political gamesmanship, inexperience, and plain bloodymindedness that drove the Bush administration’s action plan for war. The cost of this folly to America’s economy and world influence — already staggering — is, over the next 50 years or so likely to be very, very high.

Terrorists are unquestionably evil, and to call them down on your head (“Bring it on,” GWBush) is self-destructive. And I can tell you (since I worked side-by-side with local hires in Baghdad) that the citizens of Iraq didn’t appreciate the US using their neighborhoods as impromptu killing fields for itinerent terrorists. And that a body count of dead terrorists is inconsequential next to the body count of their victims, and those who suffered from their murderous acts.

Does that make the terrorists good guys? Of course not. But does that make the US any less foolish for having deliberately created an environment that would attract their attention and in which they could thrive? Actions have consequences: We wrecked the Iraqi state and were unprepared to manage the consequences.

With regard to what Washington may have thought was going on at the time, how could anyone have gotten it right with the ocean of misinformation floating around? That, partially, explains Congress’ acquiescence to the Bush war plan, in addition to the 9/11 Effect.”

You seem to think that there was no public opposition to the war until it started to turn really, really sour in early 2004. I’d be happy to post pictures of me (along with millions of my fellow human beings worldwide) protesting our opposition to an uneccessary war that we universally knew would be a debacle if not a disaster. In November 2002.

As for the behavior of Democrats in Washington at the time? When Bush was building his case? That behavior was disastrously wrong for the Democratic Party and the world at large. Not Dems’ finest hour.

Bush and Cheney had the approval of Democrats in Congress, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.  Whose approval did Obama get?  And how about Clinton and Kosovo?  Should he be brought up on charges too?

Hyperbole, hyperbole, hyperbole….what else have you got but Hyperbole? 

Sure, why not forgive and forget when you are attacked and the other side declares war on you?  Why should we fight?  We could just lay down and wave flags at the victorious attackers, and completely forget about fighting back since there is no clear guarantee that we will win.  Now that’s a strategy.

What you see as failures, millions see as victory and an end to dominance, subjugation and annihilation of their people and culture.  It’s utter nonsense to say if nothing was done to fight Japan and Germany, the world would be better off.  You make great assumptions about what Germans would have done to remove Hitler if there were no pushback from the Allies, or the outcome in China if Chiang Kai-shek and the Allies did not fight back.

Wars and their outcome are unpredictable and messy, but to pretend that if one does nothing or does not resist all will turn out for the best flies in the face of human history and common sense.

I don’t know…it’s pretty hard to top “Slick Willie Clinton” or Obama’s pretty speeches meant to ferment hatred and class warfare.

100% correct.  But the posters here will sooner or later bring it out.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbs-news-reporter-says-white-house-screamed-swore-her-over-fast-and-furious_595011.html

Why don’t you let us know what the formula is to achieve certainty in predicting how a war will go or how long it will take?  I’m sure everyone in Washington would love to hear your sage advice.

Spoken like a true Democrat Liberal!  See folks?  This is all they’ve got….hate, bias, filth, lacking of any human compassion or understanding.  And they say Republicans have no compassion?  LOL!!!!!

No, Rumsfeld was part of an administration that freed millions of Iraqis from the satanic rule of Hussein and his 2 diabolique sons, who would throw people off the roof, cut out their tongues, bury them alive…all because they offended them.  At least now they can determine their own fate.

Perhaps you should try to find some small uninhabited island to live on where there is no war or conflict, completely shielded from the outside world and its realities.  And if you’re lucky, you may find someone else to go with you.  You certainly are not at home in the world of human beings where war and conflict have been going on as far back as when there were only 2 of the human species in existence.

What you call criminals, millions of us call HEROES who fought back against those who hurt us and still try to destroy us.  We will NOT allow evil to run over us and destroy us without a fight.

Sorry, but he was a traitor to his country, which was and still should be punishable by death, and more to the point today, he was an Enemy Combatant and therefore relinquished his rights as an American Citizen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_combatant

This comment was posted and got 10 likes.  I’m assuming by your flippant comment that you consider yourself right-on-center when it comes to your politics.  If not, I stand corrected.  If so, why would you not consider a protest that draws attention to the fact that the thugs on Wall Street not only caused the last market crash, they walked away from it scott free.  With millions of dollars in bailout money.  The criminals on Wall Street give themselves huge bonuses and spa retreats while most of the rest in this country and around the world suffer.  Ya, what a bunch of losers.  Why would they want to “occupy Wall Street”?  Maybe they should get back to their jobs.  Oh, wait.  They lost them after the crash, along with their homes.  What a bunch of layabouts, huh?

Here it is, proof that it saved thousands of innocent lives.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cia-confirms-waterboarding-911-mastermind-led-info-aborted-911-style-attack-los-angeles

http://www.sundriesshack.com/2007/12/11/cia-agent-waterboarding-saved-lives/

I think you’re wrong.  When you associate with only Liberals, you think the whole world is liberal in thought.  Most people in the world, and in the US in particular, are neither hard left nor hard right, but somewhere in the middle.  The Liberal Bias you speak of is concentrated on the 2 coasts of the US where leftist professors have been educating an entire generation of young people with their simplistic lectures and their lies.

When those young people finally grow up and have to deal with the world as it is, they see the fallacy in what they had been taught and those with an intelligence give up their Liberal ideology for the foolishness that it is.

“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”

- Winston Churchill quotes

I thought you were talking about LDS folks marching on Wall Street, and I was confused. I’m sorry for my confusion. I misread your post.

And likely not on this thread since it has nothing to do with the topic.

Most of those Innocent Iraqis were killed by Saddam Hussein and his 2 sons.  The other so-called innocents are Radical Muslims who were incited to fight against the US, who freed them from their oppressors.

SOME SAY HE WAS A NITWIT BEFORE

Jeffery Bovine, attempting to visit relatives who had fled their Redding home moments earlier, sustained traumatic injuries while sniffing refrigerated biscuit cans in a local super market. Witnesses say he had a can of Pillsbury Butter Lovers Whole Wheat biscuits in his right hand and Value-All Lard Lovin’ biscuits in his left. As he was alternately holding each up to his nose, a military recruiter from Destiny Mall approached the refrigeration section of the store. In an apparent panic, Mr. Bovine squeezed the Lard Lovin’ biscuits which resulted in a minor explosion driving the metal end cap deep into his forehead. Although the injuries were not life-threatening, doctors at Our Mother of Perpetual Agony Hospital declined to remove the end cap. Hospital Administrator Sister Maria Vendetta told this reporter, “Mr. Bovine is a frequent visitor to our facility, suffering from a wide-variety of self-induced traumas. Mr. Bovine is uninsured and had made no effort to settle his delinquent bills. We declined treatment and asked Mr. Bovine to depart at once.” Big-9 medical reporter Dr. Percival Haryana Tamilnadu said Mr. Bovine can enjoy a normal life but with diminished brain capacity, occasional headaches and hallucinatory beliefs he is a Rat Terrier. Dr. Tamilnadu recommended frequent bowls of water and aspirin. 

By: Juanita Maldanado, Central Valley Startlegram.

That’s rich, hearing Rumsfeld called the reported “mean”!

And, don’t forget the flowers. Our invading troops would be greeted by crowds with flowers. Or, was that Big D*ck?

well you and reality parted company a long time ago, and it seems to have worked for you!

Rumsfeld is a man of principle and honor.  Everything that the government did was with the knowledge and approval of all in the government, both left and right – of that there is proof.  

A brilliant man, who conducted himself in this interview with class and in a dignified manner.  He called the reporter right and responded correctly.  

I always got a chuckle out of his interaction with the media, because he could not be manipulated and I loved his comments.  I gather there is an entire book with them – will have to find it some day.  

Donald knew what this fool was attempting and he didn’t allow him the courtesy of “falling” into his trap and that sucks, I know.  

Darla, David Kay testified to what they found, nasty……..ongoing………stuff, the transcript of his testimony has been published for years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/03/iraq.usa1

Justice is not hate.

Mardec:

“freed?”

The only thing that was “freed” was the flow of blood–and oil.

Your point is valid, but I’m gonna guess that you took a different tack with Jose Padilla.

And that’s instructive.

expatpatriot, that study was also “slagged” by other scientists, newspapers, etc. this from Iraq Body Count:

Exaggerated claims, substandard research, and a disservice to truth

“….study seriously flawed, new study shows

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/exaggerated-orb/

That money you spent for that “college” you attended?

Wasted.

Look up hyperbole in a dictionary before you use it.

Stick with single syllables…

You’ve never watched Al Jazeera.

Sending Americans to Iraq–with its bloody results–is far worse.

My compliments on your ability to use “understatement.”  Ouch!  Seriously, I cannot understand how a plurality of Westerners can find the Islamic culture so endearing?

I suppose they are genetically similar to those who once, and still find/found Communism such a swell idea!  Unfortunately, Other’s generally have to clean up the mess, the belligerent idealists tend to make?

Purveyor

I know you like the word, but you are using it incorrectly.

It does match your politics, though.

Wow!

Rummy is insulted by someone asking if he feels for killing innocent people in Iraq because Rummy doesnt think anyone in Iraq is either ‘innocent’ or ‘people’

So, let’s go see what the CBO actually says, not what expatpatriot is peddling.  Figures include both Iraq and Afghanistan costs.

Including both funding provided through 2007 and projected funding under the two illustrative scenarios, total spending for U.S. opperations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities related to the war on terror would amount to between $1.2 trillion and $1.7 trillion for fiscal years 2001 through 2017 (see Table 1). final section of this testimony briefly compares parts of CBO”s estimate to a frequently cited estimate prepared by 2 academic researchers, Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=1682l6830l0l10184l15l15l0l3l3l0l234l1751l3.6.3l12l0&q=cache:Pz9REon7qBQJ:http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8690&type=1+congressional+budget+office+iraq+and+afghanistan+war+cost&ct=clnk

Also provided is the breakdown of expected expenses in all categories related to the war on terror.

Dissasociation from reality would also include citing bogus CBO figures, could be dissassembling of truth, who knows.

yah but don’t you think a million sounds so much better? 

It was always a made up # and people forget how many of his “own” Saddam killed.  That # will never be known accurately, because of his method of disposal of them, but experts peg it at 600,000 to 1 million. I am not trying to justify the deaths – it was horrible and it was a horror for everyone.  It was a war.  The inflated # was used to to try to shame Bush – never truthful.  It was also a disgrace how the media gave the democrats who had vocally supported Bush’s actions a complete pass on their turncoat behaviour when it was politically expedient to do so.  In fact the media encouraged their abhorrent behaviour by featuring their “disgust” with the war.  The # of deaths reported hourly in bold typeface.  I guess they don’t much care since Obama is in office because our losses are not front page headlines any longer.   

“torture” that was only objected to by one congressman……Jane Harmon when briefed on waterboarding during one of their briefings, in another briefing:

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Out of the 30 briefings, Jane Harmon was the only lawmaker to object.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html

First, I would refuse any interview about the Bush policies…read my book, read his book and go EFF yourself.
AND were this kind of thing to have happened in any interview I would have walked out after  slapping this fool right in the nose.
George Bush did his best to keep us safe……NOW…what about the foolishness which is going on in THIS administration….ANYONE GIVE A FLYING RATS PATOOT ABOUT THAT?

But beheading innocent journalists is all OK….acceptable by the free world and gets not a whole lot of notice or outrage.
Give me a break…you loooooons are defective from birth!

According to the signators of the AUMF, and the allies that participated,  it was a necessary invasion. 

All this armchair quarterbacking is so cowardly, especially when those same standards applied to the former administration are dismissed and excused away today.  We are still fighting the same breed of killers today as the day we started and will for many years to come.  Sunshine patriots are so lame.

That’s a long told myth:

“….in fact, he never stood up to Rumsfeld, never pressed for more troops in Iraq, and when asked in a private meeting with the Joint Chiefs if he had concerns about the war plans, never said a word, according to two people who were in the room.

Asked by “Newsweek” two years ago to respond to the criticism he didn’t press his concerns, Shinseki e-mailed back:  “Probably that’s fair.  Not my style.”

http://premium.edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/08/sitroom.01.html

Shinseki did not bring up the “need more troops” until a congressional testimony….after the troops were already in position, ready to go in.

The troops were greeted with crowds,  flowers, high fives, signs thanking us, etc.  Lot’s of Iraqi’s stayed in their homes for fear of the secret police they lived under for way to long.

Marines welcomed as heroes:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/04/09/MNbaghdad.DTL

Brief description of the flowers on page two.  To deny that Iraqis did not welcome being freed from rape, torture and death by the hands of Saddam, his sons and henchmen is absurd.

again, not the stated goal

no, that’s not ok either

your comment is completely suspended from reality

they found nothing, rio.  NOTHING!

Furious? Raally. Looked and sounded very controlled and focused.

Yep, had NOTHING to do with Bawney Fwank and Chris Dodd destroying Fannie and Freddie. Let me guess, the new bank fees have NOTHING to do with Dick Durbin. Stop being such a tool

Since I can’t answer Tim Tebow’s comment below on this site (yet I can respond to my own comment…Mediaite is nuts…go figure), here’s the definition of Hyperbole Tim asks for.

hy·per·bo·le   [hahy-pur-buh-lee] Show IPA
noun Rhetoric . 1. obvious and intentional exaggeration.
2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”

Again, Tim Tebow needs a dictionary.  Doesn’t know the meaning of the word “Hyperbole”.

See, this is the problem.  I had no idea that Iraq and Afghanistan attacked us.  I must have missed the news reels while watching my obvious Liberal tv shows.  Those bastards!

Nobody does…especially Iran.

I especially liked the professional journalistic quality of the enterviewer’s question about ‘when he stopped beating his wife’.

Saddam was in power since 1979 (when we put him in power).  If we were so invested in freeing the Iraqi people from his tyranny, why exactly did we wait until 2002?  Seems to me we were in the neighborhood in 1991.

You just drew a conclusion from your own assumptions.

That’s truly instructive.

When you know your wrong is when you have to resort to legalisms in attempts to deprive people of their rights.  There is legal precedent, but there is also a higher truth.  The point at which you go off the rails is forgetting that before our American traitors receive the deaths they so richly deserve, they’re to receive the full recourse of our system of justice, as is the inherrent right of all our kind.

It’s one big thing what separates us from just another run of the mill banana republic.

Good for you then.  I just Instructed Tim Tebow.

What Travis Pierson said.  Additionally, those who without reservation seek to attribute causality of those deaths to one side in a two sided fight has as well as sided with the other side.  Enjoy your terrorist “allies” while you still have your head, idiot.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69491-9/fulltext

Going after after Afghanistan was right because they provided a training ground for the terrorists but, Iraq is a different story. I have yet to see, or hear a justifiable excuse for attacking Iraq.

It just shows he had no clue what he was getting himself into or for that matter how to get out.

Are you talking about the hero Bin Laden, our ally from 1979 to 1989 during Operation Cyclone, receiving US finances and arms to conduct “freedon fighter” tactics against the soviets in Afghanistan?  Or do you mean the hero Hussein, our ally and US proclaimed “the defender of the Arab world” during the Iran-Iraq war?  Or perhaps you mean the Taliban, our ally in the “war against drugs” and the financing they received to overthrow drug lords in Afghanistan and burn poppy fields in 2001, just prior to Sept 11?

“What you call criminals, millions of us call HEROES who fought back against those who hurt us and still try to destroy us.  We will NOT allow evil to run over us and destroy us without a fight.” – why doesn’t that apply to every nation that the US has invaded or manipulated?

What was it you said about, “nothing to do with the topic”?

Seeing as you could not restate my assertions that they in any way resembled what I wrote, it’s not surprising that you utterly failed to grasp the point, let alone the supportive structure which led to that point.

Have fun linking to proof of that that as the post was entirely my own composition.

It sounds like reality and you never got along.  Here is some key non-reality words Republicans like to use.  ”Everything” that the government did was with the knowledge and approval of “all” in the government, both left and right.  Its always Everything and All or nothing with Republicans because they  only see things in black and white there is not grayscale in their world.  

Republicans like you like to make it sound like everybody was in support of this war. You can’t even get 100% believing that fish live in the ocean let alone believing the war was justified. 

Military officers in the Pentagon said that he overruled a lot of decisions that cost many lives. He didn’t care if soldiers had the proper body armor or not and of course he knew where the weapons of mass destruction were; east, west, south and north of Baghdad.  

He just doesn’t want to admit any mistakes. That is rule #4 in the Republican playbook don’t ever admit a mistake.  
  

Nor, it seems do you, or anyone else. War is unpredictable…just ask anyone who has studied wars or been in the service.

It’s not exactly a good definition of slick, though, that the co-opted media won’t call Obama for his constant lying.

Rumsfeld talked in esoteric intangibles and confused people with his rhetoric that even those who disliked him would laud his speaking skills.  Willie used to talk the ears off the press and go down so many blind allies he buried the larger picture in minutia.  Obama simply lies through his teeth and nobody in traditional media points it out because they’re shielding him.

If you did not hear of the Intelligence reports from our CIA, and those of the UK, France and other European countries,
and if you did not hear the bragging done by Hussein about his weapons and what he would…and actually did with them on his own people..,
and if you did not hear his own military officers confirm that they too thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and more than just the poison gases which were indeed found,
and if you did not hear of the UN Resolutions urging Hussein to do as he had agreed to do at the end of Desert Storm and stop breaking those agreements, 
and if you did not hear of his flaunting UN Resolution after resolution,
and if you did not hear of the US Congress, both Democrat and Republican, voting to give Bush authorization to go into Iraq to finish what was not finished in Desert Storm and freeing the Iraqi people for the despotism and cruelty of Hussein and his 2 sons……then I do not know where you were all that time.

Do you realize you just rhetorically imbued Rumsfeld with godlike powers as to say he is capable of causing the damnation of others?

Probably not.  It goes a way to explain, though, from whence comes your partisan “zeal.”

I’ve been in the service and he should of known that it would take longer than 6 days. It takes 6 days just to get to Baghdad.  Sounds like you don’t understand war planning.  

Or he implicitly rejects the notion that any death which occurs during the insurgency were solely attributable only to the one participant exercising restraint – as opposed to terrorist whose only tactic was to generate civilian casualties.

The rhetoric of the modern radical left – so alike to the rhetoric of America’s enemies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKBDHWDgBobeautiful from Ron Paul himself

ummmmm….thanks?

Your comments are pointless.

No, because Kosovo didn’t bankrupt us. Kosovo did not kill thousands. Kosovo did not destroy our image in the world. And Libya was not a war. (But I disagree with Obama on that)

Comparing the Obama and Clinton admin to Bush admin on war is incomparable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_bombing_memo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/09/iraq.guardianobituaries

if its too close to the alqaeda, why do they “encourage” the arab spring? why did sec. clinton compliment them? why do their journalists come on mainstream news channels here to report?

What if the poster heard all those things and still thinks the war was unjustified with regards to American interest?

Neo-cons such as yourself are so committed to defending from radical leftist detractors the Iraq invasion, its aftermath and its handling – simply for the fact that it was the policy of the political spectrum from which you hail – that you’ve never bothered to analyze the results and see that the policy was fundamentally flawed from start to finish.

“Halfway through the Obama tenure, his predecessors are still running into trouble”?
More like three-fourths the way through. For this turkey, it’s 4 years and he’s done!

Chalk up another “liberal” who sides with our enemies in declaring that any death which results in a war is attributable to the Americans – never mind that the chosen tactic for the insurgents was to cause as many civilian casualties as was possible. Somehow, with them, even with suicide bombers strapping explosive to themselves biding their time for when the produce market was most busy, it was Bush’s fault.

There are millions and millions of us who consider Rumsfeld a monster
and people like you fools. In fact, that’s the predominant opinion
worldwide.

You are outnumbered. Reality is displaying its well-known “liberial” bias.

Oh, look.  An Appeal to Popularity logical fallacy in plain sight with a side of self-satisfied conceit.

Are you trying to challenge Darladoon as having the laziest argument in the thread?

But not n early as “worthless” as Rumsfeld.  Another “heroic patriot.”

It’s hard enough to go to war but to have this reporter point fingers like that…is uncalled for.  He should have been yanked off the network.  why do we need to worry about any of the enemy anyway.  When there is a war, civilians are going to get in the way.  It isn’t something a person seaks out…to be killed. Why this journalist was even allowed to speak is beyond me.  People in the middle east are so backwards. They still dress like years ago, treat their women like crap and we should care what they think.  Get over it.

You big babies.  Did you go to war or did you stay at home and hide under your mama’s skirt. You dems take the cake.  It would never be good enough for you.  You whine, complain, point fingers, swear, and continually blame the other guy.  Do you take credit for anything?  When Obama is finished you will hear alot of illegal things that have been pulled during his presidency.  You have only just begun.

You idiots don’t have a clue.

Oh, just ignore him…he just trying to upset you.  Any idiot can figure out that Obama isn’t doing his job but to ask a democrat the actual truth is like talking into a tin can.  They don’t hear, see or want to admit that Obama is a dishonest SOB.  if having him as a leader makes them happy, watch them whine and complain about him when they find out all the crap he has done to this country.

Like Obama’s lone decision to go into Lybia and take more of our soldiers there.  Oh, they won’t be there more than a couple of weeks.  have you heard of them coming yet??????

oooo…spooky, im sure many dems join the military

Spell Libya right, then I’ll answer.

The tool my friend is you. Why do you believe that all those mortgage agencies that were filing falsified legal mortgages are out of business? Why are all the owners of agencies like Country Wide not in jail or at least all the thousands of brokers who passed false papers in jail?

Why are the Wall Street banks whom bought mortgage agencies just so they could issue more and more mortgages and bundle them into derivatives to sell to the State’s retirement funds not in jail?

Why is it that as soon as all the players in the mortgage industry passed the papers on the loans quickly sold them off to Freddie and Fannie to get them off their books not in jail.

The answer to all these questions is out there in the records, the SEC brought up the investigation and then let it be handled by the the Wall Street Bankers. Of course none of the bankers found any evidence of fraud going on in the mortgage market, why should they, they were making billions off the business.

Then, you might ask what did the SEC do with all those investigations? Of course they shredded the investigations since there was not any wrong doing by the bankers own investigations. 

And this is why there is revolution on Wall Street and unemployment and homelessness in America. 

You might ask yourself how did this all go wrong? Just look at 30 years of regulations being eliminated from Wall Street. Yes the same regulations that were put into place after the first melt down in the 1920. So now we have a replay of the crash except World Wide Crashes because our fine Wall Street bankers were the consultants to these countries, like Greece, and advised them how to handle their debt. 

Yes, the World should be marching on Wall Street since it’s made a real mess of the world. Then again lets just look at what all that money flowing into politics have done to American Government. It’s all going to crap and all the top 1 %’s can say is “let them eat cake!”

It’s Al Jazeera! what did Rummy expect! 
Oh yeah, he’s trying to sell a book to the world. I knew there was money involved somewhere.

Thanks for the link to what is widely regarded as the shoddiest piece of survey work in history. It has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. It is garbage – yet you and your America-hating leftist buddies choose to continue to believe it’s true because it supports and forwards your narrative. Talk about intellectually incurious.

It’s unrealistic to expect that Al-Jazeera would have anything but an agenda-driven interview format. Mr. Rumsfeld should have done his homework, and gone in prepared. In answer to a question like, “Do you feel responsible for hundreds or thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths?’ He could simply have answered “no,”
and let the interviewer sweat the ensuing dead air. It isn’t by any means a new trick, when dealing with “Do
you still beat your wife?” type questions, and gains the momentum for the interviewee. Instead, the man
was inexcusably unprepared. It was a shame, because it was a wasted opportunity to beard the lion in its den.

As for the “protest Wall Street” people, ultimately they’re just useful idiots for the Left, being used to sow
uinrest and, hopefully, violent “civil disobedience” in an attempt to distract and intimidate., in aid of Mr. Obama’s re-election candidacy.

I was around for the Sixties and Seventies. For the guys, all the “noble heroic protest” was just about dope and girls. For the girls it was all about dope and daring. We all kidded ourselves that we were all about bulding a better world, but all it was, was a ten-year-long casual frat party, with the illusion of doing dangerous things comfortably balanced by the knowledge that we could run home (or back to school, where the profs were trying to be “hip” by sucking up to us) whenever we wanted to.

Our contributions: (a) pandemic venereal disease; (b) a ruined academic system; (c) cowardice enshrined as a virtue, and (d) proof that a healthy, strong person in the flower of his twenties could manage to drink and/or drug himself to death.

Oh, yeah. We revoluitionized music. You can still hear it, in the elevator or grocery store of your choice.

For all the young people who will be sacrificing their degrees and their dignity, their magnificent energies and their idelaism to the users who don’t see them as any more than cannon fodder, I apologize with all my heart on behalf of my generation.

If you’re opposed to oppression enforced by genocide, taking out Hussein was the only option. Sure, he was “contained” but Iraqis were still being tortured, maimed, raped and murdered despite the containment.

I know you don’t think it was worth it. I think it was. Our opinions in this matter are irrelevant. The only ones whose opinions truly matter are the liberated Iraqis. I formed my opinion based on the smiles on the faces of those waving their purple ink-stained fingers after voting in their first free election, not on any pre-formed political ideology.

I used the quotation marks around “scientists” because they went to Iraq not to find out the truth, but to gather data to support an agenda. True science does not have any agenda besides finding the truth. You claim those surveyed had to show a death certificate, which is false. If that were the case, why perform a door-to-door survey? Why not go to the morgues or search public records? They intentionally went into neighborhoods and marketplaces which had experienced numerous terrorist attacks and surveyed the people there just to fudge the numbers in the direction of their agenda and then published the data prior to peer-review. When it was reviewed by multiple peers, there wasn’t a single review that agreed with the original conclusion. Those who reviewed the study were scientists. Those who conducted the study were “scientists.” Do you get it now?

The numbers I quoted were the figures spent from the beginning of the war until the most recent expenditures released. I quoted them from memory because I couldn’t remember where I read them. I read too many sources to keep track of all of them, but Rio was kind enough to provide the CBO link that refutes your claims. Looks like my memory of the war expenditures was actually a bit high.

I disagree that leftist, statist, globalist economist Stiglitz is more credible than I am. You only believe that because you share his ideology.

I wonder why these protestors (and people like YOU) are not making similar comments of condemnation about Solyndra and the Obama Administration – who took 1/2 Billion TAX PAYER dollars and farted it away (OR laundered it right back into Democrat [Obama?] campaign funds)?  Where’s the protests there? 

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were KNOWN to be in trouble back in 2003, when the Bush administration TRIED to get tighter controls on them, but Barney Frank, et. al. would have NOTHING to do with that – INSISTING that there was NOTHING wrong with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM

To suggest that CONGRESS did not MANDATE (threaten) lending institutions to make loans that NO SANE lending institution would make, is pure Liberal Lunacy!

It was the INTRUSIVE FINGERS of Government which, ultimately, caused the economic collapse, and the CONTINUED actions of Government (Record Borrowing, reckless over-spending, punative taxes and regulations) which have resulted in the Credit Rating of the United States to be lowered (for the FIRST TIME IN HISTORY)!  What a lasting legacy Mr. Obama will have as his ONLY major accomplishment!

Obama:  The CHANGE we WARNED YOU ABOUT!

TRAVIS PEARSON/RIO:

I’m shocked to hear that the CBO and Stiglitz disagree on statistical methods, and also disagree on what costs should be attributed to the war versus non-war expenses. Especially since the CBO disclaims all costs of a “macroeconomic” character. In the the real world, we don’t get to ignore macroeconomic costs.

That’s why I cited both sources. Compare and contrast. I cite, you decide.

Here’s the CBO  2.4 billion reference. See “Indirect and delayed costs” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

And the larger point is that even at the most conservative estimate — 800,000 billion, say — the Iraq war was still a huge and hideous debacle: militarily brilliant at the outset and degenerating into farce, tragedy, and horror following “mission accomplished.”

Every sane person prefers Saddam Hussein dead. However, waging a foolish and unneccessary war — badly — to get him dead was not sane. And America and the rest of the world will be paying for the aftermath for decades.

Your cartoony “revenger of justice” role for the United States is not exactly sustainable. Equally cartoony (or sappy, if you prefer) is your notion that only Iraqi public opinion of the outcome matters.

I’d say that the families of American dead might be entitled to an opinion.

And the American taxpayer might have a thing or two to say.

Am I supposed to care how many congressmen got it wrong in 2003? Doesn’t change a thing. Torture is torture.

NorCalSister, she of the whimsical spelling, says “Thank God our world does not have a lot of your types!”
I reply, in essence, “NCS, you’re a moron. Millions of people disagree with you, and consider people like you to be, well, morons.”
QED: The world *does* have a lot of my types.
I then go on to enhance the lesson by pointing out that the spread of “my types” was global. And in fact my observation is that most of the people I have met worldwide with whom the subject has come up have agreed that Rumsfeld is a war criminal.
QED: The world has *lots and lots* of my types.
And with regard to where “popularity” sits in the playing out of human events? It’s a helluva lot more potent than logic, as any sensible person will tell you.
Which was my point.

I believe your opinion is flawed.  If this were a perfect world and we could know the end results before we start anything in life, then armchair analysts and Monday morning quarterbacks might have something.  But since real life is NOT like that at all,  we cannot stay frozen and do nothing simply because we cannot predict with certainty the outcome.

This applies not only to war, but to any undertaking in the human experience, form genius’ ideas brought to fruition e.g. Tom Edison, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs,  to the pursuit of love and marriage.  The ONLY certainty in life is, as they say, death and taxes.

I believe your opinion is flawed.  If this were a perfect world and we could know the end results before we start anything in life, then armchair analysts and Monday morning quarterbacks might have something.  But since real life is NOT like that at all,  we cannot stay frozen and do nothing simply because we cannot predict with certainty the outcome.

This applies not only to war, but to any undertaking in the human experience, form genius’ ideas brought to fruition e.g. Tom Edison, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs,  to the pursuit of love and marriage.  The ONLY certainty in life is, as they say, death and taxes.

It’s not enough to simply throw up hands and say whatever will be will
be; if something can be shown to have bad results again and again,
there’s no upside to stupidly doing the same thing over and over.  War
especially so, as such is often the cause of the rise and fall of
nations.  Sun-tzu, Clausewitz, Washington even; these were not men who
would say oh well, nobody can predict outcomes.  Yes, actually, there’s a
theory to how to conduct matters of state when conflicts of interests
come to war, learned study and analysis.  Only we have a structural
problem in this country.  We have a simplistic notion of the application
of force adopted by progressives and neo-cons alike – that war is to be
resorted to as the chief means of exerting influence or backing policy;
that it is to always be fought or threatened to be fought with the
highest sighted goals and in an all-in fashion so to enact the greatest
amount of change, engendering BTW, a commensurate level of doubt and
instability, followed by the promise that in such an environment one
should then expect, if not manage, positive outcomes.

Though on the surface what we achieve may be called victory, often the
situation that develops shortly after is worse than what occasioned our
military involvement to begin with.  Iran, for instance, is well on
their way to fabricating a nuclear bomb; but having not acknowledged our
being on the receiving end of their proxy war in Iraq (for to do so
would’ve interfered with a War on Terror enabled by our tear down of the
Iraqi state) we no longer have the regional presence – and certainly
not the will of the American people – to do much of anything about it. 
But hey.  At least neo-cons can thump their chests (much to the
displeasure of progressives who were against the war for it didn’t suit
their domestic political agenda) about how we liberated the Iraqis from a
brutal regime.  And they’d be right, too.  For a few years, anyway. 
Reverse the parties, and the situation would be exactly the same, only
with the reversed.

“Know your enemy and know thyself and in a hundred battles you will be
victorious.”  But such, you think, is flawed.  Without, however, a much
of a counter-opinion offered. You’d have the result of military actions
dependent on mere chance.  And if failure ensues (if ever you can be
convinced that it was a failure), at least we meant well.  After all,
nothing is guaranteed in life.  Nothing except trite death and taxes
jokes.

You go with that then.  “Well, we may not have logic, but there’s a heck of a lot of us.”

See what that brings you, in the end.

Did I make my point?

Rumsfeld’s response communicates his stubborn willfulness and inability to receive any criticism, even if implied, perfectly.  This is an interview.  Can you imagine what it was like for Pentagon colleagues and subordinates who disagreed with him?

Sure — on Rumfeld’s side.

The financial system is the capitalist system.  It appears you do not have a clue.

Yep. The fact that you either deny or don’t understand that entirely non-logical factors predominate in human beings is noted.

While ignoring the non-logical is folly, please do continue.