How Much did Rumsfeld Know?

[blzrul]

I thought Rummy has been perfectly clear in the past about the knowns, the unknowns, the known knowns and the unknown knowns not to mention the unknown unknowns. It's pretty clear he doesn't know much and probably never did.

[Pete]

Rumsfeld is POS and is singlehandedly most responsible for the failures of the Bush adminstration. !@#$ him and !@#$ his puppet Paul Bremer!

[Peter]

Rumsfeld is POS and is singlehandedly most responsible for the failures of the Bush adminstration. !@#$ him and !@#$ his puppet Paul Bremer!

 

The list includes:

 

W

Rumsfeld

Cheney

Wolfowitz

Feith

Perle

Hadley

[/dev/null]

The list includes:

 

W

Rumsfeld

Cheney

Wolfowitz

Feith

Perle

Hadley

 

How could you forget Karl Rove?

[LancasterSteve]

The Republicans and Democrats are both worthless.

 

True dat !

[Nanker]

I met the former Undersecretary of The Navy under Clinton.

He was the Dean of the grad school I attended.

Among other things - he provided a tour of The USS Winston Churchill - at the time the nation's newest Aegis class Destroyed.

It was christened but not yet commissioned.

The ship was anchored in Brooklyn and we arrived to see a patrol boat doing sentry duty in the dock area cordoned off on the water. Scuba divers were in the water checking for vermin. This was months after the attack on The Cole, and just before 9/11.

What a great ship. I'd seen a few being built in the Maine Iron Works in Bath, ME on trips to and fro on family vacations to Maine.

As majestic as they are from afar - up close they're an absolute wonder of mechanical, electric, electronic, hydraulic and about every other kind of engineering you can think of.

 

One of the things I was struck by was his talk about his role in modernizing the Navy.

He told of the entrenched established old-line top brass and how they wanted to keep things unchanged.

They have a tradition of building careers running the Navy, and in a classic good-old-boy network the top brass made nice with the contractors and often would retire from service and then join the contractor at a senior executive level. Nice work - if you can get it.

 

Things did begin to change in the Clinton administration - but strategic change was diluted into simply downsizing. One of the struggles they had in modernizing the Navy was the amount of manpower required to run the supply ships -without which a ship of the line could not last more than about five weeks at sea. The problem was - a Navy Tender which brings fuel and supplies to the ships needed about a hundred of sailors to operate. At the same time - modern freighters and tankers have a crew of a couple dozen. He was tasked with making the Navy more efficient and to save more - downsize and outsource as much as possible because the Navy couldn't compete with the private sector in support services.

 

Out goes Clinton, in comes Bush and your friend "Rummy". Rumsfeld immediately went after the military's established old guard to modernize and make a more efficient defense force and got a lot of resentment and ill will for his efforts. He challenged them openly to do more with less. By doing so, he created a lot of waves - where waves are not appreciated. Millions of dollars in their future earnings were at stake. The man was a viewed as a heretic.

 

I find it ironic that a lot of the anti Rumsfeld criticism is bolstered by the amount of grief he got from within the military.

It's the old, "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" argument.

I submit, an enemy of my enemy can also be my enemy.

[molson_golden2002]

The downfall of the Republicans is that the Conservatives (small government gun toting folk) and Religious Right (Bible thumping tongue speaking moralistic govt-in-your bedroom motherment types) are under the same umbrella.

 

The Dems have a similar problem that their JFKennedy Dems (government that cares but doesn't spend to oblivion) join up with their Left Loonies (motherment and spending and Unions to the death).

If you could get those reasonable JF Kennedy Dems to somehow join with the Conservatives--finding their middle ground--that could be an attractive party. I wouldn't like the JF Kennedy Dems but I'd take it over either party's current compromise.

 

In retrospect, Reagan's "big tent" looks like a really bad idea. It was a strategy well executed by him to win the White House. But 30 years out, you've got a Republican party whose core principles are so compromised that it can't seriously claim to stand for small government and less taxes.

You mean the Kennedy Administration that proposed Medicare? Massive housing assistance to the poor, training for the unemployed and more, all inside a pretty Conservative era? Ya, Kennedy was a Progressive. He was pro-motherment

[John Adams]

You mean the Kennedy Administration that proposed Medicare? Massive housing assistance to the poor, training for the unemployed and more, all inside a pretty Conservative era? Ya, Kennedy was a Progressive. He was pro-motherment

 

Fair enough. !@#$ him. I still propose that there is a more reasonable wing of the Dem party--pick your own name for them.

[Chilly]

UH yeah actually I DO, and that question had been answered. While I am truly flattered that you skipped through the thread to jump to read MY post, perhaps you should have taken the time to take in the complete conversation.

 

Great! So now we've established that your reply didn't actually reply to the post you quoted.