If you will remember, The United States got involved with Iraq following UN Security Council Resolutions: Resolution 660, Resolution 661, Resolution 678, Resolution 686, Resolution 687, Resolution 688, Resolution 707, Resolution 715, Resolution 986, Resolution 1189, Resolution 1284 and unanomously passed UNSC Resolution 1441... To name just a few (there are many more that Saddam thumbed his nose at)

President Bush stated "What good are these resolutions if they are not enforced?"

The only one of 26 provisions that weren't fullfilled by the invasion was "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (an Issue raised by Bill Clinton to justify bombing Iraq in "Operation: Desert Fox" in his 1998 State of the Union Address.) though 819 tons of military grade explosives were destroyed by US forces.

China wanted to veto use of force in reciprocity to the US criticizing China's human rights violations.

Russia wanted to veto because the US was encroaching into it's realm of traditional influence and several high ranking officials held interests in Iraq's oil fields.

Rummy was not involved with Abu Ghraib or waterboarding prisoners. Beleive it or not, he was actually very upset over those incidents (I was too). It gave our enemies a reason to start killing people.

The "Attrocities" committed by American's do go punished. There are many American's serving life sentances or facing death for their crimes of war.

We exact our own punnishment - rather than going to the world courts. The world courts are just for those who face no trial for their crimes.

I could go on and on about how Secretary Rumsfeld is completely innocent of any crimes - but you really have to be more specific in your accusations.

We can't exactly humiliate the United States and execute him on international television just because you might be a virulent hater of Republicans.

I am a Democrat, by the way, but not a hater.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that Bush (by his own words) authorized torture and Rumsfeld was unaware.

819,000 tons of explosives were destroyed - in the first year.

Non of the resolutions u mentioned authorizes the invasion , many unbiased ppl said that including Kofi Amanda , France and Germany. The invasion was and still illegal according to the UN and nothing u say can change history. It makes no difference if u r a republican or a democrat because the majority of the 2 houses supported the invasion based on "Inaccurate Intel."
UN said da invasion is illegal this makes all ppl behind it a bunch of outlaws starting with bush.

It s Kofi Anan,, my stupid phone

...other than being the greatest failure of a defense secretary since Macnamara

Read "Cobra II", and tell me he's a brilliant strategist. And that's not a political polemic - its the most detailed account of how every decision he made regarding Iraq was the absolute worst one possible.

And he blames bremer... when Bremer was HIS guy. He shortchanged and then evicted garner, guaranteeing from the outset that there would be never be any working State Dept people on the ground... first he delayed anyone working on 'post-iraq'; then when a team was put together he isolated them and provided no budget or resources; then when they got on the ground, he immediately changed his staff and kicked them out. If that wasnt an INTENTIONAL desire to have no capable individuals involved in post-iraq management, it doesn't even matter = the results of his meddling ensured that everything was going to go to hell. He screwed the whole thing up before it even started, and compounded his errors over and over after it had begun. Anyone defending his record is either ignorant, or consciously misrepresenting history.

Rumsfeld was a failure. And on top of his failure is the total lack of any sense of responsibility for his failures. Macnamara spent decades issuing mea culpas for his mistakes. Rumsfeld will go to his grave blaming everyone else for things he simultaneously claims weren't really mistakes anyway. Thats basically his twisted rhetoric: "Nothing went wrong and it wasn't my fault anyway".

Hill Billy Brett--Too many of your assertions are outright lies!! Rather than being a sychophant for Rumsfeld, you should start reading the books that show this man to be a willing and knowledgable war criminal. "Hubris", "Fiasco". "The Price of Loyalty", "Against All Enemies", "Worse than Watergate", "On the Brink", "The Terror Presidency", "State of War", "The Dark Side". A few of the many articles that are also out there: "The New Pentagon Papers", "The Torture Memo", "Tortured Reasoning", "The Downing Street Memo", "Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President". The information in these books and articles would be more than enough to convict Cheney, Bush, and a group of about 15 others for war crimes. I can hardly wait for Cheney's book to be published. It will be an even bigger lie than Rumsfeld's.

"Fiasco" is a pretty good book on all this.

I thought it was better than "Cobra II" which was good also.

Just sayin'

Walt

Except that the US didn't. The US never did the work necessary to find out who in the upper reaches of the military command knew about Abu Gharib, knew about the other illegal detentions of hundreds if not thousands of Iraqis, who knew about their torture and has not ever determined who in the higher ranks was responsible.

What strikes me about all of these reviews of Rumsfield's books, is that there is no discussion about whether or not the decisions to use full fledged military force in both/either Afghanistan and/or Iraq was an error and if so, what role Rumsfield played or did not play in making them happen.

There is no discussion about Bush II's formulation of his incredibly aggressive & warmongering "pre-emptive invasion" policy or his administration's failure to make sure the troops were properly armored & equipped or to ramp up funding for the VA when it became (as it rapidly did) clear that neither illadvised invasion would be a "cake walk."

There is no discussion of whether or not it was necessary to remove the Taliban, who were not involved (according to anything I've read) in 09/11. The Bush administration had had no problems w/the Taliban prior to 09/11, despite their destruction of some historically & religiously important Buddhas. What Bush was proposing was that the Taliban give the US carte blanche, no questions asked, to do whatever it wanted in Afghanistan after 09/11, and then invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban rulers had difficulty making up their minds or were reluctant to permit such a wholesale invasion of by a foreign nation. Gee, I wonder how the US or France or the UK or Japan would react to such a request? Has the US ever acceded to any requests from other nations to come in and wipe out those members of the CIA who have arranged the assassinations of leaders in other nations? Coups? That would be a comparable or analogous situation.

Only one review even refers to the dominance of the neocon or PNAC's influence in the shaping of the Bush administration foreign policy and Rumsfield's perspective, assuming he demonstrates any in his book.

There is no discussion of why Iraq, rather than North Korea (which openly claims to have "weapons of mass destruction" and its willingness to use them--and did so during Bush II's terms) was invaded because--allegedly--of the fear of WMD use. Or, if "bringing democracy" was such a concern, why Myanmar, clearly a nation in great need of a more just form of government w/a strong bill of civil & human (not corporate) rights, was not the choice for an invasion. Instead, all the reviewers appear to unquestioningly accept these rationales, so there is no discussion of the underlying lack of logic or what might've been the actual reasons for Bush II's decisions and therefore reasons for the remarkably poor choices. Unless the reviewers think military involvement that has now lasted longer than WWII is a good thing and a success of some kind, other than a success/victory for all those military defense contractors who are becoming very wealthy from the proceeds of no bid, no real cost accounting required, over run costs expected military contracts.

Certainly none of what's happened appears to have made that part of the world any more peaceful or prosperous. In fact, it seems to have made one of the Bush enemies, Iran, stronger.

If the US was determined to get those "responsible" for the growth of Islamic fundamentalist/radical wings who focus some of their hatred on the US, and whose citizens were the majority of the 09/11 plane hijackers, why the US didn't invade Saudi Arabia? It's not like it's a secret that the Saudis, the Wahabbists, fund extremist Islamic groups.

In short, none of the reviewers examine the logic of the political beliefs or ideologies that at least appeared (or were alleged) to drive the foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration. They continue to accept the belief framework as created by the Bush Administration and that includes Rumsfield.

The only issue I agreed w/Rumsfield about was the need to change the way the US military fights, in that it's been my opinion, since Vietnam, that most of the armed conflicts the US would be engaged in would be guerilla warfare, not the warfare of WWII or even Korea. Whether it's guerrilla fighting in tropical areas & jungles or street fighting in urban areas, it was going to be more like parts of France (where it was farm field by farm field w/tanks that weren't suited to the terrain). There was & is a great need to develop an effective way of dealing with the specific & severe stresses of dealing with a population that you were charged w/protecting, "pacifiying/organizing" or being friendly with, as well as being aware that any one of those civilians could be setting up an IED or be a suicide bomber.

I agreed that it called for a different kind of organization. But I did not see that Rumsfield had any coherent & practical idea of what that new kind of military organization should be, nor did I see that Rumsfield was willing to learn from the few experiments in different ways of doing things the military had managed to do or from the officers w/the most experience--i.e., field officers. His trashing of Shineski is good example of how poor his choices & managerial skills are. As happened w/so most of the neocons neocons, his arrogance resulted in the suffering of hundreds of thousands of so many people--and achieved no useful purpose. Unless, again, you believe that making a number of military defense contractors very wealthy and further weakening the US economy are useful and worthy purposes/achievements.

Anyone who likens Iraq with what's happening in Egypt is, well, not stupid. but startlingly oblivious to the difference between "regime change" at the point of many guns and a what appears to be a grass roots citizen movement to make a government more responsive to the needs and wants of its more than a small elite number of its citizens. Moreover a regime that has been supported by the US via lots of foreign aid. There is a HUGE difference. HUGE. The push in Egypt is, as far as I can tell, coming from the inside, NOT the outside. It is not being imposed by a foreign nation (Egypt's sure had enough of that method of forcing change) and is, in fact, a revolt against an administration supported by the US while Hussein, had long ago lost the favor and support of the US. In addition, it has been remarkably non-violent, at least on the part of the demonstrators and particularly compared to an entire army complete w/vast numbers of weapons, rolling into Baghdad,, and the bombings, razings of neighborhoods, detentions of thousands of people that occurred/occur in Iraq.

They are two very very different events. For the time being, anyway.

The Taliban guides on the Pakistani side were corrupt and took money from both sides and allowed some 200 fighters to escape.

In retrospect, GATOR mines and US Marines should have been used.

Tommy Franks sold out the troops for a book deal.

Walt