My OperaSo farewell then Donald Rumsfeld.
Friday, November 10, 2006 1:54:56 AM
It's not so much of a surprise that poor old Don got the shove, but you do have to ask yourself, if Dubya had ditched the guy a week before the election, would it have made a difference of the few thousand votes he needed to keep control of the senate?
I saw Dubya on TV this morning saying that only the night before he thought they were going to be OK. Then he said "Shows how much I know...". Right. I heard what he said, but I knew what he meant, and it still left me wondering all the same. Why did he give Rumsfeld the job in the first place?
Now here I have to admit that I have the advantage of just having watched 'Don - The Early Years' in a documentary about the upsurge of terrorism, but really, this guy, back in the days of the cold war, having been told by the intelligence services that Russia was nearly bankrupt and couldn't afford to attack Finland let alone the US, interpreted this to mean that Russia was faking bankruptcy to hide the fact that it was even now amassing its massive military might ready for the big one, and therefore America must invest in it's defenses like never before.
Part of this armoury, so he believed, was a fleet of super-subs, capable of untold, unspeakable, underwater mayhem. Upon being told by naval intelligence that they had seen or heard no evidence whatsoever of this threat Rumsfeld concluded that this meant the USSR had perfected anti-sonar, and the US must invest in defeating this new threat like never before...
Not the man I would have picked to mastermind a war.
But given that he was picked for the job, didn't alarm bells ring in Dubya's head when, having been told no less than 5 times by military intelligence that Saddam didn't have any connection with al Qaeda, Rumsfeld declared that the two were definitely linked, and having been told by the UN investigative team that Saddam had indeed disposed of his weapons of mass destruction, he came to the conclusion that this must mean Saddam had thousands of the things, some capabable of reaching America, burried in the sand?
Obviously Rumsfeld can't help himself, he's just a 'Glass half-empty' kinda guy, but that's just his excuse. Now what about all the people who believed him? Not sacked, unfortunately.
This thought doesn't seem to trouble Rumsfeld.
Which is why it troubles me.
I saw Dubya on TV this morning saying that only the night before he thought they were going to be OK. Then he said "Shows how much I know...". Right. I heard what he said, but I knew what he meant, and it still left me wondering all the same. Why did he give Rumsfeld the job in the first place?
Now here I have to admit that I have the advantage of just having watched 'Don - The Early Years' in a documentary about the upsurge of terrorism, but really, this guy, back in the days of the cold war, having been told by the intelligence services that Russia was nearly bankrupt and couldn't afford to attack Finland let alone the US, interpreted this to mean that Russia was faking bankruptcy to hide the fact that it was even now amassing its massive military might ready for the big one, and therefore America must invest in it's defenses like never before.
Part of this armoury, so he believed, was a fleet of super-subs, capable of untold, unspeakable, underwater mayhem. Upon being told by naval intelligence that they had seen or heard no evidence whatsoever of this threat Rumsfeld concluded that this meant the USSR had perfected anti-sonar, and the US must invest in defeating this new threat like never before...
Not the man I would have picked to mastermind a war.
But given that he was picked for the job, didn't alarm bells ring in Dubya's head when, having been told no less than 5 times by military intelligence that Saddam didn't have any connection with al Qaeda, Rumsfeld declared that the two were definitely linked, and having been told by the UN investigative team that Saddam had indeed disposed of his weapons of mass destruction, he came to the conclusion that this must mean Saddam had thousands of the things, some capabable of reaching America, burried in the sand?
Obviously Rumsfeld can't help himself, he's just a 'Glass half-empty' kinda guy, but that's just his excuse. Now what about all the people who believed him? Not sacked, unfortunately.
This thought doesn't seem to trouble Rumsfeld.
Which is why it troubles me.
