Barf:

Rumsfeld’s experience will assist the Hoover Institution’s research into terrorism, said institute director John Raisian.
“I have asked Don to join the distinguished group of scholars that will pursue new insights on the direction of thinking that the United States might consider going forward,” said Raisian.

This is the most perfect example of why I’m not sorry not to be in my former biz. Any institution that willingly associates itself with the creator of “how many vases can there be” and “unknown unknowns” should have its accreditation revoked. Not that I should talk, I know lots of “good” and “serious” and “scholarly” schools do this, but still. He’s going to do “research” because he’s got so much “experience.” With failure? Lying? Murder? Is that what “scholarship” is about these days?

Academics everywhere should hang their heads in shame. This is a new low. Even for the leeches/subs for the uberwealthy calling themselves “universities.”

Almost two years ago (October 19th, 2005 to be precise) I posted the following school-themed post. I repost it here today to remind anyone who doubts or cares: when it came to the Bush Administration, many of us called bullshit before the MSM even looked up from their steno pads. It ain’t “I told you so”—it’s “We all told you so.”

++++

INT: OVAL OFFICE, DAY

A pretty woman speaks with the children, some of whom play with toys on the floor.

Alright, alright, settle down, settle down. Now, do you know why all of you are here today?

“Snacks?”

No, not snacks. Anyone?

“Mom is at the store?”

She might be. Donald, sit down. No, we are here to talk about what the word “treason” means. Does anyone here know what “treason” means?  Read more 

Why does this not surprise me in the least? Even 400K wouldn’t have been enough, and they knew it. In 1999, no less:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its “Desert Crossing” games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.
The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University’s National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

“The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops,” said Thomas Blanton, the archive’s director. “But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground.”

There are currently about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak of about 160,000 in January.  Read more 

The reason this is important is because we must never forget that the essential difference between today’s Left and Right. The Right takes care of its own, no matter what their crimes. Wingnuts will seek to clothe Rumsfeld, architech of a failed war and one of those who brought torture into our daily American vocabulary, with false glories designed to rehabilitate his legacy. This is so that someday down the line, either in name or in deed, Rummy will be welcomed back into the ranks of “legitimate” Beltway leaders, as well as his policies. He is not and they are not. Everything about his tenure is a disgrace, and his name should be permanently associated with “failure” Here at Corrente, we will never forgive, and never forget. Claremont “Statesmanship” Award.

Spit on the troops, shit on the troops, “what’s the difference?”
Cliff asks:

Here is the Bush Administration when the scandal broke recently:

At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said he spoke with the president yesterday about Walter Reed and the president told him: “Find out what the problem is and fix it.”

He said Bush “first learned of the troubling allegations regarding Walter Reed from the stories this weekend in The Washington Post. He is deeply concerned and wants any problems identified and fixed.” (The stories were published Monday and yesterday in the Monitor.)

And here is President Bush December 20, 2004, when defending his then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld:

“I know Secretary Rumsfeld’s heart; I know how much he cares for the troops,” Bush said, adding that Rumsfeld and his wife, Joyce, often visit military patients at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and the Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md.
You got that? Rumsfeld was with the patients, and obviously just didn’t notice the crap falling from the ceiling, soiled carpets or multi-legged creatures living among our wounded soldiers.  Read more 

This type is at an all time high.

Rummy is to blame.

This has been another edition of “why certain warmongers need to be T.C.&E.”

If the Germans have any say in it.

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Read more 

In case you missed Bush’s presser today:

As with most of Bush’s recent press conferences, his confidence and speaking patterns varied wildly thoughout it, from fairly composed to awkward and lost.  Read more 

I’m listening to the vaunted press conference of George Bush that’s going on right now, and I’m guessing this will be remembered as one of the weirdest, most arrogant and bile-filled crankfests yet to spew out of the Whiner-in-Chief in the history of his presidency. Snark, snark, appreciative/nervous laughs from the gaggle, snark. Of course there’s the mandatory fake-humility of a call to bipartisanship, couched within a “fuck-you, Dems” remark about hanging on to his principles (as if he had any). His hubris and defensive bullying really knows no bounds.

But the real news is that this Yalie brat has finally given one of the architects of our poisonous foreign policy the heave ho, “after a series of thoughtful conversations”:  Read more 

Bruising, indeed.

The choice is now clear. Republican candidates for Congress and the Senate can either stand with our troops, or they can stand with Bush. The two are no longer compatible.

Monday, an incredible rare joint editorial will run in the Army Times, the Air Force Times, and the Navy Times:

Time for Rumsfeld to go

“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.”  Read more 

They’re mean, they’re lean, and they won’t go away. The money quote:

The case will draw on a powerful new argument. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the President promoted and recently signed into law, provides retroactive immunity for civilians who violated the War Crimes Act, including officials of the Bush Administration. Such an attempt to provide immunity for their crimes, it will be argued, is in itself evidence of an effort to block prosecution of those crimes. Indeed, according to Scott Horton, chair of the International Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, when Yugoslavia sought to immunize senior government officials, the United States declared the act itself to be evidence of such a conspiracy.  Read more 

See, I have an overwhelming feeling that my head is going to pop like a ripe zit when I read something like this. Why doesn’t Rummy Darling have an actual explosion when he spouts this craptacular bit of pus?:

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: The fact of the matter is - if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq, he would be rolling in petrol dollars. Think of the price of oil today. He would have so much money.  Read more 

Will deprogramming even be possible?

At a watermelon festival in Chickamauga, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, substitute teacher Clydeen Tomanio said she remains committed to the party she’s called home for 43 years.

“There are some people, and I’m one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord,” Tomanio said. “I don’t care how he governs, I will support him. I’m a Republican through and through.”

Just to show what we’re up against.  Read more 

You make the call, because I honestly can’t tell anymore. I take the SCLM is all over this, not:

By Stephanie Heinatz

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)

FORT EUSTIS, Va. - Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a postwar plan.  Read more 

This is a classic case of clapping harder so Tinkerbell won’t die. I guess I will never understand, living in the Reality-Based community as I do, what it must be like to live as if your own lies were truthy facts. But I’m not Rummy or any of his minions, so what do I know.

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.  Read more 

I don’t even have a response to this, it’s so freaking stupid:

Published: August 29, 2006 11:30 AM ET
FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in “manipulating the media” to influence Westerners. “That’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.  Read more 

METimes. Interesting:

Sherwood Ross

WASHINGTON, DC — It is an “open secret” in Washington US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “wants to extricate himself from Iraq” but President George W. Bush “remains resolute,” thus the US hangs on, a US investigative reporter has written.

The result is a military posture in limbo somewhere between aggressiveness and withdrawal that could bog the US down in Iraq for years. Tragically, it opens the door to escalation of the horrific violence which in Baghdad on kills around 50 people daily and wounds many times more.

The Pentagon has largely switched from rooting out and killing insurgents, as in the first two years of the war (2003-4), to hunkering its troops down in “isolated mega-bases,” said George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of The Assassins’ Gate (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). This approach, known in Washington as an “exit strategy,” has put the much victimized Iraqi public at increased risk.  Read more 

Remember how the Republicans believe they create their own reality? In fact, listening to Republicans on Iraq has always reminded me of Woodstock:

Maybe if we all think real hard we can stop the shitstorm rain! Everybody chant with me! No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain!

So far, in Iraq, the Republican strategy of thinking real hard and chanting in unison hasn’t worked out real well for them.
But now there’s hope:

In a step toward linking a person’s thoughts to machines, Japanese automaker Honda said it has developed a technology that uses brain signals to control a robot’s very simple moves.

At first sight, it seems implausible, but work with me here:  Read more