From Radio 4's Broadcasting House: The Donald Rumsfeld Soundbites of the Decade. A collection of statements we do now know we know.
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - View this thread

Same Old Dogs, Same Old Tricks. In a rare act of bipartisan cooperation, the House of Representatives passed a group of bills strengthening the FOIA (HR 1309), streamlining access to Presidential Libraries (HR 1255), and expanding safeguards for whistleblowers (still in process, HR 985), with those that were passed having a veto-proof margin. The White House sharply criticized these acts of transparency as unconstitutional, a threat on the established separation of Powers, and as a threat to national security [pdf]. All of which heralds back to an earlier time, that looks vaguely familiar...
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

US Military Papers open fire on Rummy. Tomorrow, the Army Times -- and all other Military Times papers, including Navy and Air Force Times -- will run an editorial calling for Donald Rumsfeld to tender his resignation or be fired, due to his gross incompetence in handling the Iraq quagmire.
posted on Nov 5, 2006 - View this thread

Let's Roll !!! Does Donald Rumsfield contradicting the official US record harm America?
posted on Dec 27, 2004 - View this thread

The automated signature machine would like to express it's sincerest condolences ..."Rather than personally signing letters of condolence to the families of service members killed in action, Rumsfeld has been letting office workers affix his signature with a stamping machine."
posted on Dec 21, 2004 - View this thread

Request for guidance regarding the OGC's EC regarding detainee abuse, referring to “interrogation techniques made lawful” by the “President's Executive Order.” comes from Records Released in Response to Torture FOIA Request.
Smoking Gun ? asks the ACLU--or just another stepping stone from Torture's Path ? As Ex-Military Lawyers Object to Bush Cabinet Nominee, and in Torture begins at the top, Joe Conason suggests that a recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that "marching orders" to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld himself and all the while Guantánamo torture and humiliation still going on, says shackled Briton. (more inside)
posted on Dec 20, 2004 - View this thread

"There is no excuse for superior authority not choosing the most suitable agents for particular duties, and not removing unsuitable agents from particular duties." With all the talk of empires and resignations, a reflection to history turns up a remarkable story about an already remarkable man:

A tense time in British India came to a head when General Reginald Dyer's brigade opened fire on an unarmed crowd assembled in Amritsar with machine guns, killing 379 and wounding over 1500. Command wanted to relieve him of duty, but patriotic (and imperialist) fervor at home led to a parliamentary debate which was expected to repudiate this decision and honor him. Enter War Secretary Winston Churchill who defended the Government so eloquently that the minds and hearts of the entire deliberative body were turned.
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

Jesus Built My M16 (474.9 MB Music Video torrent) "The Future Patriots were established in 2002 by the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld as a method of training our nation's youth in the arts of propaganda, fear-mongering, race-baiting, dis-information, and electoral fraud. We aim to assure that the control of this great nation will never be handed over to the liberal homosexual atheists who threaten our way of life by their very existence. May these songs profit the Revolution! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!"
posted on Nov 2, 2004 - View this thread

Frontline: Rumsfeld's War, a PBS/Washington Post joint documentary that aired earlier this week is now online. It is the inside story of Rumsfeld's battle to assert civil control over the military.
posted on Oct 30, 2004 - View this thread

Rumsfeld doubts Saddam Laden link US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cast doubt on whether there was ever a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
posted on Oct 4, 2004 - View this thread

Rumsfeld knew. More revelations from Seymour Hersch at The New Yorker.
posted on May 17, 2004 - View this thread

Drunken Temple Boxing! You may have defeated my Southern Hook Palm technique, but can you defeat the 1000 styles of Rumsfeld?
posted on May 12, 2004 - View this thread

Pentagon Flunky Misplaces 9/11 Talking Points at Starbucks A Pentagon employee left documents with talking points to help Donald Rumsfeld deal with questions about 9/11 on Sunday political chat shows. The employee is almost certainly due to get fired, because the documents even included a hand-drawn map to Donald Rumsfeld's house! (Note: documents in pdf file.)
posted on Mar 31, 2004 - View this thread

Rumsfeld waffles on Face the Nation when asked about the "immediate threat" argument in favor of war with Iraq. Link is Windows Media video.

This to me is a gregarious example of how semantics and linguistic framing has been used to manipulate the American public, and one clear moment of this questionable tactic breaking down.

Interesting how he tries to blame it on the media and "folklore", and then segues right into noncommittal doublespeak.

Via Joi Ito (text available), via Center for American Progress.

The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, set to music
The Unknown

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."
[Department of Defense news briefing Feb. 12, 2002] : Now, imagine it set to music and sung aloud by a classically trained female singer with a beautiful voice. [ Mp3 clips available at main link ] Some conservatives consider it a homage, while I find it beautiful, compelling, and disorienting.
posted on Mar 12, 2004 - View this thread

Rumsfeld's fighting technique is unstoppable. [via airbag]
posted on Feb 26, 2004 - View this thread

Several newly declassified documents have been added to the National Security Archive's Saddam Hussein Sourcebook, including a State Department cable to special envoy Donald Rumsfeld (PDF) for his second meeting with Saddam Hussein (months after the infamous handshake meeting,) in which Rumsfeld conveyed the Reagan administration's undiminished support for Hussein despite their public condemnation of his use of chemical weapons. (It also mentions but seems unconcerned with Hussein's support for Abu Nidhal.) Another document describes Bechtel's intention to do business with Iraq (PDF) through non-US sources in case of US sanctions. [More analysis at Juan Cole.]
posted on Dec 23, 2003 - View this thread

Has Rumsfield Lost His Mojo? Time was first to break the story, but now the world is listening. Can it be? Has Rumsfield truly, really, devastatingly lost his mojo? And is he just pretending to not know what it means?
posted on Nov 2, 2003 - View this thread

At least four times in the fall of 2002, the president and his advisers invoked the specter of a "mushroom cloud," and some of them, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, described Iraq's nuclear ambitions as a threat to the American homeland... Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use.

So in regards to Iraq's possession of the one weapon we can be certain causes mass destruction: the atomic bomb, as Gregg Easterbrook put it, the verdict is the unsurprising (and unsurprisingly closely held) nope, not, zero, zip, nada...
posted on Oct 27, 2003 - View this thread

Let's fire Rumsfeld! Moveon wants him fired and so does Truemajority. Considering the White House has been looking for a fall guy for Iraq for some time now, can the constituents help Bush decide? I guess we can debate the effectiveness of petitions but photos like these are just impressive.
posted on Sep 18, 2003 - View this thread

Rumsfeld's personal spy ring The defense secretary couldn't count on the CIA or the State Department to provide a pretext for war in Iraq. So he created a new agency that would tell him what he wanted to hear. Today, Salon also looks into the role played by John Bolton. Is investigative journalism now just relegated to the web? [you have to look at an ad, I believe]
posted on Jul 15, 2003 - View this thread

Regime Change Bonanza. Donald Rumsfeld is pushing for Iran to be the next to fall.
posted on May 30, 2003 - View this thread

U.S. says Iraq may have junked toxic arms Thus spake Rummy in a speech. We know they have them. If we can not find them it is because they got rid of them. But that still means they had them at one time, right? Question: what are those top scientists and Bath party members telling their captors wherever they are being held for questioning? Or is too important to reveal too.
posted on May 28, 2003 - View this thread

Did Bush know? An article in today's New York Times (link to mirrored site with no reg. req.) pieces together data that the author claims proves that Bush and his inner circle were well-aware that they were using false "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. Sy Hersh from the New Yorker is also chiming in, as is Salon's Joe Connason and Katha Pollitt of The Nation. A pretty decent subsection of media is finally descending on this story. If Bush or Powell or Rumsfeld are proven to have been knowingly deceitful, will the American public be even half as angry as the rest of the world?
posted on May 6, 2003 - View this thread

Former N. Korean Nuclear Contractors are "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." An article in yesterday's Fortune mentions and quotes a number of former employees/contractors for a Swiss engineering firm -- headed by Donald Rumsfeld at the time that Pyongyang began getting its nuke on. Nevertheless, Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director. unsurprisingly, the media is not exactly all over this.
posted on Apr 30, 2003 - View this thread

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is an accomplished man. Not only is he guiding the war in Iraq, he has been a pilot, a congressman, an ambassador, a businessman, and a civil servant. But few Americans know that he is also a poet.
posted on Apr 2, 2003 - View this thread

"General Rumsfeld" “This is tragic,” one senior planner said bitterly. “American lives are being lost.” The former intelligence official told me, “They all said, ‘We can do it with air power.’ They believed their own propaganda.”
posted on Apr 1, 2003 - View this thread

WSJ says war in Iraq really first step in grand scheme to remake the Middle East. Rumsfeld and Fleischer can still be seen on TV news implying "we just want them to disarm". More on What Makes W. Tick from The Atlantic.
posted on Mar 21, 2003 - View this thread

Military use of Gas
Top US military planners are preparing for the US to use incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the plans in February 5th testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee. This is the first official US acknowledgement that it may use (bio)chemical weapons in its crusade to rid other countries of such weapons.

Would someone explain to me again why we're attacking Iraq? Was it something about use and/or possession of chemical weapons?
posted on Mar 21, 2003 - View this thread

Rumsfeld's comment about the draft has caused a stir. The Hispanic Caucus is upset and they're the new major minority (an oxymoron?). It has also riled the feathers of the Vietnam Veterans of America. If you Google "Rumsfeld draft" there are the two links above but the only article in a major newspaper is The Moscow Times. Rumsfeld called his statement at a Pentagon press conference "not eloquently spoken". Is this a big story? Talk amongst yourselves.
posted on Jan 21, 2003 - View this thread

Rumsfeld helped Saddam during war with Iran, while they had precise information about daily use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, and sarin. He met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime and restore full diplomatic relations, in order to help Iraq win the war. [source: Guardian]
posted on Dec 30, 2002 - View this thread

Monumentae Rumsfeldiana: A soundbite competition for future tombstone use. [But should a British state-owned corporation like the BBC make official fun of an senior American government minister? Real Audio req. ]
posted on Dec 22, 2002 - View this thread

An official Q&A with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, alludes to some extremely scary/interesting tidbits-- the Office of Strategic Influence is still alive, John Poindexter can do anything he pleases with DARPA, we just might renew nuclear weapons testing. Don't worry, though. Rummy sez: "Anyone who is concerned ought not be. Anyone with any concern ought to be able to sleep well tonight. Nothing terrible is going to happen."
posted on Nov 23, 2002 - View this thread

"According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by U.S. forces. In other words - and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan - the United States government is planning to use 'cover and deception' and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. "
posted on Nov 4, 2002 - View this thread

Rumsfeld's Rules [For educational use only] Donald Rumsfeld's Management Rules. Once available via the DOD website; now all copies have been pulled from government servers. This is one of the only copies still online. Read it ... while you STILL can... Soon available for sale in a print edition. Does it contain Hidden War Strategies? Can a US offical make money on the sale of "management techniques" developed and revised while serving as a government agent? Is not everything Rumsfeld produced in his capacity as a government agent owned by the US public? Discuss.
posted on Oct 3, 2002 - View this thread

TRANSCRIPTS:
A case on Iraq - Rumsfeld's testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee, 9.19.02.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.
GAO e-Government Proposal.
Senator Byrd on the Department of Homeland Security.
Today's bumper crop of limited audience government info links. "Maybe only 50,000 people want to know what's going on in Libya, but those 50,000 people are really important. You don't want to have more planes blow up. But maybe six million people want to watch Jerry Springer. Well, who owns the airwaves? Basically we do." Do you think that unprocessed, source texts are getting filtered effectively to the public?
posted on Sep 22, 2002 - View this thread

"All this costs money. It costs more than we have." One year ago today, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned of a "subtle and implacable" adversary whose "brutal consistency...stifles free thought...and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." It wasn't freedom's obvious foes; he was referring to waste in the Pentagon. The DOD uses so many different financial systems and interfaces it won't have auditable books for another five to 10 years. It still manually enters purchases made with electronic purchase cards. It fires whistleblowers who call attention to shady missile defense deals. And every year, it completely loses track of a quarter of the world's biggest military budget.
posted on Sep 10, 2002 - View this thread

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11 "CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." Rumsfeld: "Go massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
posted on Sep 5, 2002 - View this thread

Secretary Rumsfeld is RAISING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS. [Quote inside.] Any links to substantive material on these questions, above and beyond an individual's personal opinion?
posted on Sep 3, 2002 - View this thread

As it turns out, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein were buddies back in the day.
posted on Aug 3, 2002 - View this thread

Goodness Gracious! What A Lot Of Ways Of Not Saying "God"! Jeez may be MetaFilter's genteel exclamation of choice, but crusty and trusty old William Safire of the New York Times[registration required]has the gracious goods on other ways of not(quite)invoking the name of the Lord in vain; whilst proving en route that Donald Rumsfeld isn't, after all, the wilting sissy or pseudo-Southern belle we all thought him to be...
posted on Jun 15, 2002 - View this thread

I had trouble sleeping Saturday night because of a CNN story suggesting that "increased level of chatter and activity" indicated that "another al Qaeda terrorist operation could be in the works." The "warnings" have been coming ever since: Cheney said Sunday that future attacks were "almost a certainty" and FBI director Robert Mueller stated "we will not be able to stop it", with Ridge and Rumsfeld spinning similar tales today. Is there a new threat? Ridge hasn't changed the nation's security alert from "yellow," and AP reported today that "a top White House aide said last week's criticism prompted a two-pronged political response: Bush accused Democrats of playing politics with the issue as his advisers reminded voters that America is still a target."
posted on May 21, 2002 - View this thread

New Missile Defense angle: blow everything out of the sky with nuclear interceptors Anybody else impressed by Rumsfeld 's insight?
posted on Apr 11, 2002 - View this thread

Donald Rumsfeld from Dep of Defense biography ...."Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high definition television (HDTV) technology". ...boy that must feel like 100 years ago....
posted on Oct 8, 2001 - View this thread