Rumsfeld's Resignation

[PoLiX]

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary on Wednesday, one day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses.

 

President Bush nominated Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

 

Asked whether his announcement signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, “Well, there’s certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon.”

 

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept control of the House and possibly the Senate.

 

Military officials and politicians dissatisfied with the course of the war had called for Rumsfeld’s resignation in the months leading up to the election. Last week, as Bush campaigned to save the Republican majority, he declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the end of his term.

 

I think it is about time. Things just ain't going right for us over there, and we need new ideas. He should of stepped down when we all began first noticing this wasn't going to end as quickly as thought, and no new ideas we're brought forth on how we we're going to get out.

[NBVegita]

I agree that he should have gone long ago. But I also don't dissagree with him being kept in a little after things went south. He was doing what he believed was right. I guess if things start going bad, give the guy a chance to correct it. If that doesn't happen, boot him on ze bum.

[Aileron]

This whole situation sickens me. At the start of this War in Iraq 70% approved and 30% were against it. Now its 30% are for it and 70% are against it. !@#$%^&*uming the least number of people changed their minds as possible, we have 30% of people who always supported it, 30% of people who always were against it, and 40% of people who changed their minds.

 

I am one of the 30% who approve of it. We think the benefits outweigh the cost.

However, I can also understand the 30% who were always against it. They think the costs outweigh the benefits.

 

Its the remaining 40% that scare me. I guess they thought that we could reap the benefits without paying any price for it.

 

I guess their claim is that they were somehow tricked into thinking the benefit-cost ratio wasn't what it is. So apparantly they got duped by the "Master of Deception" that is George W. Bush. I just never thought that so many people could be so good at lying to themselves. Bush is not a skilled liar. People don't get honestly tricked by people like Bush. Instead, they "let themselves be tricked" because deep down they agree with the person but have some sort of issue in their higher concious with the action.

 

Here, the issue is imperialism. A lot of people outright dismiss any act of imperialism as wrong, when in reality sometimes imperialist actions are right and even necessary. If lions didn't kill and eat zebras once in a while, the African ecosystem would be damaged.

 

Truth be told, after spending a few decades watching our enemies gather in Afghanistan, but doing nothing about it because such an action would have violated another nation's sovereignty and because the international community would have dissapproved. After watching them gather, those enemies struck at us, and then we struck back at Afghanistan, but we knew that wasn't enough. We needed to show other nations that would consider being the next Afghanistan that we were now willing to violate sovereignty and defy the international community in order to defeat our enemies. So, we picked out an enemy and defyed the international community in an act of destroying him. Sure, there were other reasons, but this was the one that changed it from "There is a lot of good reasons, but not quite enough" to "Okay, now we have enough reasons."

 

Slowly as this war went on, people realized that this was their motivation for their support of the war, but because this reason is imperialistic and because such people cannot admit their own sins, thinking themselves so righteous to be above such actions, they choose a fall guy - namely the Bush Administration.

 

Bush did what the people wanted. Rumsfeld did what the people wanted. The problem is that 40% of the people are hypocrites, who rather than admit their own faults decided to blame Bush and Rumsfeld, claiming to be "tricked" by Bush when in reality Bush doesn't know how to tell a believable lie. (I mean this as a compliment, as lying is a skill like any other that requires practice.) Now Rumsfeld is being used as the fallguy for their hypocrisy.

[L.C.]

[infowars] Rumsfeld Is Sacrificed, But Who Pushed Him Into The Flames?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/infowarsnews/message/1157

 

[slashdot] Rumsfeld Stepping Down

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/1819203

 

[infowars] Figureheads On The Chopping Block

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/infowarsnews/message/1158

[AstroProdigy]

It's more like 60% and 40% flip. They misled the public and handled the war wrong in almost every way. The 20% thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of m!@#$%^&* destruction and links to terrorism. They also didn't realize that the Bush administration was going to completely mess up with their job. The 40% that still support Bush on Iraq is what scares me because despite all of the many many many failings they will never change their minds as long as Bush keeps gays from getting married.

[PoLiX]

I was against the War all the way. I was fine with Afghanistan, that had true reason. Yes I believed that they might have WMDs or something along those lines, but it was always known they could never reach the US. Very few countries possess any weapons that have that sort of distance. Anyone they could hurt or attack weren't really worried about it, so why should we have been? The only true thing that could affect us was Al-Qaeda, and there still hasn't been any big masses of them found in Iraq like there is in Saudi Arabia. Yet we just ignore them because they're our allies, and Iraq was not.

[Aileron]

Well, Saudi Arabia is attempting to go after the Al Queda guys in their country...they just suck at it, so what can we do? We can't just up and decide to take out our ally.

 

BTW, they DID find some old chemical weapons in Iraq. It took a long time and the weapons were really old, but we still have confirmation that Iraq DID have WMDs, so Bush was right about that one. You are correct in that they never were a direct threat to us, and in reality everyone knew that Iraq's connection to Al Queda was tenuous at best.

 

I'd say the 40% of us are thinking "What's it going to be like 50+ years from now?" By that time, we are no doubt going to have a stabile democracy in Iraq. That would provide a window between the western world and the Islamic world. That window wouldn't solve all the problems nor would it make use entirely understand one another, but it would end the isolation and thus cause us to move towards each other idealogically rather than away from each other.

 

If we didn't, no doubt Hussein would've been able to keep the reigns of power, and no doubt when he died he would have passed them on to someone same minded as him. It would have gone on like that for hundreds of years and only have collapsed when an idiot was put in charge.

 

Now is where one enters WMDs. If isolation continued for that long and it continued to be that one individual wields supreme power in each middle eastern country, it would only be a matter of time for them to acquire the technology, and then suddenly we'd have a WMD in the hands of a nut.

 

As a matter of fact we should probably be invading North Korea right now. They have a nuke, they have a missle, and they have a nut. All they need now is to figure out how to put the nuke on the missle and BOOM-there goes Sheol. I know its desirable to save war as the last option, but the other option risks nuclear war.

[»Ducky]

Really old chemical weapons being the alleged WMD's?

No, the WMD's everyone was talking about were the global killers that could be used at any second to destroy humanity, not a few bottles of Suddam's old play toys he used to gas his people.

 

The chemical !@#$%^&* was a happenance they found, not the up to date !@#$%^&* they were looking for.

[Aileron]

Weapons that could be used any second to destroy humanity? There is no such weapon!!! Even an H-bomb can only take out a single city. Sure it also creates fall out and a dust cloud which would up the casualty rate eventually, but not in a "second" as you require. (Besides, radiation's deadliness is overrated, and I'd think people would start erecting giant ionization based air filters to create pockets of area to grow crops.)

 

Are we to take it that after ten years a poisonous chemical is no longer poisonous, so therefore as long a chemical weapon is old it is harmless?

 

Yeah, so we didn't find Hussein riding an H-bomb, but keep in mind that one of those "old derelict weapons" could still get a 10 million + casualty rate easy if it hit the right place.

 

As a matter of fact we saw evidence of these weapons being used, so those chemical weapons were exactly what we were looking for.

[»Ducky]

You are overexamining what I said. Because I exaggerate a claim in order to 'clearly' show what my statement intended, there's little reason to pick it apart word for word.

 

These are not the weapons they were searching for.

Weapons being clearly manufactured in recent years for the purpose of possibly harming others on some type of grand scale.

 

Not weapons created numerous years ago to hurt others (which were already half used.)

You can BS anyway you like to if it makes you feel like you were justified.

 

It's like quitting smoking and a friend finding a pack in a cupboard from 3 years ago you had forgotten about.

Is it still a cigarette, sure. Does it have an intended use? No, it was just complete happanence it was found.

[Aileron]

First off it's a tradition of this forum to pick apart what the other guy said in a literalist fashion while ignoring the overall point. Now you know how it feels like.

 

I know that particular batch wasn't under development, but I doubt they were "forgotten about", though I guess it's true that any battle-ready munitions would've been used during the invasion.

 

WMDs were still only one out of half a dozen reasons for going into Iraq. As a matter of fact that reason wasn't used as a reason why the US should go into Iraq, but why the UN should've helped, and indeed the UN didn't get involved. Its only fair that since the UN didn't get involved, that any arguements Bush used strictly to try to get UN support not be held over his head.