QOTD: Donald Rumsfeld
by digby
Oh right:
H/t to Joshua Holland
"what digby sez..."
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Donald Rumsfeld: Rock Star Has-Been
by digby
As I watch Don Rumsfeld lie all over television this morning it makes me feel nostalgic for the good old days. Remember when the press gushed over him as if he were Justin Bieber? It’s a wonder anyone has any respect for the profession left at all:
“Everyone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse,” noted Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (12/13/01). Since the war in Afghanistan started, Kurtz observed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “getting better press than Rudy Giuliani.” Rumsfeld, Kurtz wrote, was “America’s new rock star.” Why do so many journalists revere Rumsfeld? His “rough-hewn charm and no-nonsense demeanor” are part of it, says Kurtz. And dozens of other journalists concur, often citing his “candor” and describing him as “plain-spoken” and a “straight-shooter.” Journalists’ comments about Rumsfeld range from the flattering to the obsequious to the downright bizarre. “Sixty-nine years old, and you’re America’s stud,” Tim Russert told Rumsfeld when he interviewed him on NBC’s Meet the Press (1/20/02); Larry King informed him that “you now have this new image called sex symbol” (CNN‘s Larry King Live, 12/06/01). Fox News‘ Jim Angle (12/11/01) called him “a babe magnet for the 70-year-old set.” “I love you, Donald,” Margaret Carlson announced on CNN‘s Capital Gang (12/23/01), where the Time magazine columnist appears regularly in the role of left-of-center pundit. Carlson’s Time magazine colleague, veteran defense correspondent Mark Thompson, told the Chicago Tribune (10/22/01), “Although he has not told us very much, he has been like a father figure.” While the father-figure angle might be better left to a psychoanalyst, Thompson is on to something when he says that the “straight-shooter” doesn’t actually tell reporters very much–and what he does say is often contradictory. Invoking the “fog of war” to explain why he could provide no information about Afghan civilian casualties, Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press briefing in early December (Washington Post, 12/5/01), “With the disorder that reigns in Afghanistan, it is next to impossible to get factual information about civilian casualties.”
Remember when he would hold press conferences and the reporters would giggle like schoolgirls at his every utterance? Pentagon briefings were so much fun in those days.
But nothing can beat the paeans to his many manliness from wingnut women of all ages. It was a sight to behold.
Men are likely to say they admire the way he knows his mind and talks tough or straight, or the way he managed so deftly to keep the press in its place, or, in the more general terms, what he has done and is doing for the country. Women, on the other hand tend to express their feelings about him less specifically, saying that they find him to be a particularly attractive combination of good-looking and smart and sexy. Both descriptions, however, can basically be summed up in a word that has for a considerable period of time been deprived of public legitimacy.
The word is manliness.
… [B]y the time he departed the White House there were few women and even fewer men who would with any sincerity have awarded Clinton the status of sex-hero, let alone — O happy invention! — “studmuffin.” That designation would have to await the arrival of a high-achieving, clear-headed, earnest, no-nonsense, Midwestern family man nearly seventy years old. The times, in other words, they were a-changin’.
That’s nothing to what they said about Bush, of course, but these were heady times for right wing women who love a man in a warrior costume. And Rummy was always in the mix. Here are six right wing women sitting around talking during this era:
ROLLINS: What is your definition of virility? Does it have a role in political leadership?
WALTER: It’s a nebulous quality for a political leader. Bill Clinton was virile—in a very sleazy way. There’s also the sex appeal of someone like Don Rumsfeld. President Bush possesses this intangible something—you really saw it on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Testosterone and camaraderie—many people responded to it. In George W. Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated. Bill Clinton showed a lot of outward empathy and he was very articulate but I don’t think many of us would have trusted him with our daughters.
GAVORA: If virility equates with strength, then there is no question that Bill Clinton lacked it completely. Bush has shown that he has it. His willingness to go after terrorism root and branch despite the widespread opposition among our European allies and even some at home, and to withstand that pressure, is strength. Bill Clinton made surface gestures. He refused to go against the media, popular opinion, the pinstriped boys at the State Department, because he lacked that strength.
HAYS: The most masculine man I ever knew was my grandfather, who supported seven children and never failed to stand when a woman came into the room. Bill Clinton is virile, but he’s not masculine or mature. He never became a grown man.
O’BEIRNE: When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. There’s no contest between Clinton and Bush on masculinity. Bill Clinton couldn’t credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit.
ROLLINS: But why do so many American women love Bill Clinton?
SCHAEFER: You can learn a lot jumping rope with girls. It won’t make you sexually attractive, but it will make you a more effective, patient listener.
O’BEIRNE: Bill Clinton did understand, from the matriarchy he grew up in, how to appeal to women in that modern way.
HAYS: Clinton could feel your pain like one of your girlfriends. But he could never make a decision like Bush has had to make. He would still be trying to negotiate with the terrorists. The use of force, which until recently was passé, has come back. Clinton couldn’t use force except in a motel room.
Say what you will about these days, but at least we don’t have to put up with this drivel.
Rummy meanwhile is on his redemption tour, all over the TV, saying things like “heavens to betsy” and “oh my goodness” and it’s not getting the laughs it used to from the press. It’s tough being a “rock star” has been.
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Let’s say Israel succeeds in taking out Hamas. Then what?
President Biden will be in Israel tomorrow and his trip has likely been planned with an eye toward holding back the Israeli government from the impulsive, grief-driven decision making that can lead to massive errors in judgement. From what we understand, the US and allies have been pushing Israel to take a breath, consider the humanitarian consequences and think about the day after. If anyone knows the folly of acting out of emotion and/or opportunism after a catastrophic terrorist attack it’s the United States. And the stakes are even higher for Israel.
One big demand on the part of the US is apparently that Israel have a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza. It’s unclear that they have one. This piece in the NY Times today by a post-war planner about what needs to be done seems highly relevant:
I headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003. Once the White House decided in 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein by force, I cautioned my superiors that there needed to be serious planning for what would follow. The study I led — the Future of Iraq Project, only some of which is now public — gave U.S. leaders an understanding of what postwar Iraq would need.
But before we could put plans into effect, we were thrown out of the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders in a dispute over what to do in Iraq. As a result, many of the American civilians who went there had little experience and even less knowledge of what Iraq needed to recover from decades of brutal and corrupt rule under Mr. Hussein and his Baath Party. The result contributed to the tragedy for Iraq, the United States and the entire Middle East.
What we’re seeing now in Israel and Gaza gives me the same grave concern so many of us felt 20 years ago: a lot of talk about military plans and the devastation of war and not enough about what will need to come after. I have not written publicly before about the lessons the United States should have learned from what happened to postwar plans for Iraq. With the humility of hard-won experience, I would like to offer those lessons as advice to whoever assumes this role in Israel today: the official in charge of developing a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza.
Your job will be hard, but it’s not hopeless. Reject the cynics’ advice that Israel’s job begins and ends when it defeats Hamas militarily and destroys its ability to harm Israelis again. If you fail to try to build something better in Hamas’s place or try in a halfhearted way, Israel will gain only a few years’ respite. Destruction is easy, but building is hard. That does not mean it is impossible.
The self-defeating mind-set that took hold in the United States not long after Iraq’s occupation was that the decision to invade Iraq was an original sin — something so wrong that it could never have come out better than it did. That mentality is damaging because it cuts off any serious effort to understand what went wrong and why.
The label of forever wars that has been firmly attached to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fails to acknowledge that poor planning and scant resources will always fail to secure postwar peace. It astounds me that anyone could be surprised by this. But the lessons of postwar Germany and Japan that led to their prosperous democracies today, including well-resourced physical and political reconstruction and the time to succeed, were utterly misunderstood and misapplied by Washington in 2003 and 2004. Israel has faced its own forever war since 1948. Poor planning and scant resources are also your enemy.
Just as Iraqis rightly told us before the 2003 invasion that Iraq is not Afghanistan, Gaza is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. Factors unique to Gaza, such as decades of Hamas’s anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda and Israel’s treatment of Gazan civilians since 1967, will make both physical and political rebuilding especially challenging to Israel and even more challenging than southern Lebanon was to Israel from 1985 to 2000. The deep-seated hatred that many Gazans have for Israel today has no parallel to what U.S. forces faced entering Kabul or Baghdad. Anything Israel touches in a post-Hamas polity in Gaza risks becoming toxic; you must plan for this. Your plans need to understand what Gaza needs and to recognize that the government of Israel may not be the best means to deliver that.
Plan for the length of time you will need to bring about the fundamental changes that will break the cycle of violence Israel and Gaza have inflicted on each other over the past 50-plus years — not the time politicians think you will need. One reason the State Department’s best postwar plan for Iraq, which has still never been made public, was rejected by the White House was that Pentagon officials argued that a three-year timeline was too long. Decision makers opted for the siren song of one year or less and vastly inadequate physical or political reconstruction money, without regard for the reality that fast and cheap was doomed to fail. Instead, the United States expended more in blood and treasure from 2003 to 2011 and ended up strategically worse off than if a better postwar plan had been given the resources and time needed upfront. A repeat of Israel’s 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon is neither realistic nor desirable, but neither is the more recent pattern of quick ground incursions followed by withdrawals, or what’s called mowing the grass.
Finally, remember that military victory is an asset whose power decreases over time. If and when Israel succeeds in defeating Hamas, use that limited time wisely. What you decide to prioritize may be all you get done, so it has to lay the groundwork for constructive steps, not chaos, to follow. Recovery from disastrous decisions at the outset — like the U.S. decisions to disband the Iraqi army and to fire tens of thousands more Baath Party members than necessary from their government jobs, thus largely creating the Sunni insurgency — is almost impossible.
So what should you prioritize at the outset? Consider these six points, however difficult some may seem before a ground war even starts:
1. End Hamas’s culture of economic corruption in Gaza. Corruption is at the heart of what Hamas uses to keep the Gazan people in line. This needs to end. You may have a chance to put in place once-in-a-generation root-and-branch reforms in public integrity in government contracting, civil service hiring and business practices in Gaza.
2. Listen to what Gaza’s residents want. Ordinary Gazans must have a say in their future.
3. Change the educational curriculum. This has been Hamas’s basis for ensuring enduring hatred of Israel. But don’t listen to the equally poisonous voices in Israel that would overplay your hand and undermine lasting educational reforms that would work for Gaza. There are many experts today in the Middle East and outside it who have constructive ideas for an educational curriculum that is true to Palestinian history and in the best interests of lasting coexistence.
4. Find a path for Gazans to write a constitution that will lead toward a more democratic state that can live in peace side by side with Israel. Israel needs to demonstrate that it is committed to a two-state solution. This is one way to do that.
5. Show Gazans that Israel is prepared to help Gaza rebuild economically. This close to Oct. 7, Israelis cannot readily conceive of committing to a Marshall Plan for Gaza. But Israel needs to think through what conditions would make this the right thing to do.
6. Border security for Gaza that Israel can live with — not a siege — is vital. The U.S. failure to plan for security along the Iran-Iraq border was one of the most egregious flaws in the entire U.S. postwar plan. Iran poured money, explosives and operatives into Iraq, undermining any hope for a more stable Iraqi government. It is obvious that the measures Israel has had in place since 2007 have not prevented Iran from funding, arming and helping train Hamas. Israel needs now to do better. Even when Israeli ground forces ultimately pull back from Gaza and Gazans start to provide their own police force, Israel will want to ensure for at least three decades, as unobtrusively as possible, that neither Iran nor anyone else has the ability to smuggle into Gaza the means of waging war. At the Department of Homeland Security, I helped draft this kind of plan for Israeli-Palestinian border security that could be retrieved from storage and updated — and to be made real.
As David Fromkin wrote in “A Peace to End All Peace,” it took Europe well over a thousand years to settle the fall of the Roman Empire. No one should be surprised that it is taking the Middle East more than a hundred years to settle the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Is any of this realistic? I have no idea. Let’s hope those who do are thinking this through.
Update: Jesus. This is so awful. A nightmare.
At least 500 people were killed by an explosion at a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday that Palestinian authorities said was caused by an Israeli airstrike.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the number of casualties was expected to rise. Many civilians were sheltering at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, better known as Al-Ma’amadani, before it was hit.
The Israeli military said it was investigating if it was responsible for the blast. “We’re checking,” said Maj. Nir Dinar, a military spokesman. In the past, rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups have occasionally malfunctioned and hit civilian neighborhoods.
The deadly blast on the hospital came as President Biden was preparing for a visit to Israel on Wednesday as conditions in besieged Gaza grew ever more desperate. What little remains of the enclave’s food, fuel and water supplies was dwindling fast on Tuesday, and hundreds of thousands of people were on the move, fleeing the strip’s northern half to escape a planned Israeli ground invasion.
No matter who did it and whether it was a target or a mistake it’s going to change things for the worse. And it was already very bad.
Ron Brownstein takes a look at some of the reasons why nobody should be making any predictions at the moment about the 2024 election:
Whether the GOP nominates Trump again in its 2024 presidential primaries – a dynamic that in turn will be powerfully influenced by whether he faces a criminal indictment and how GOP voters react if he does – looms, in my view, as the most important “known unknown” for 2024.
That’s not the only important “known unknown” likely to influence 2024, though. Presidential races have become such vast and encompassing competitions that a list of such “known unknowns” could stretch indefinitely. What I’ve done below is try to identify five that, at this point, appear that they could be the most significant. I’ve ranked them in rough order of my estimation of their likely impact on the eventual outcome. And they begin with the fateful decision about Trump hurtling toward the GOP.
1. How does the Republican nomination fight play out? If Republicans nominate Trump again in 2024, no other factor on this list may matter much. For many voters, such an election might reduce to a binary choice: whether or not they would again entrust Trump with control over the federal government. Democrats are confident enough of the answer that most are rooting for Trump to win the nomination.
Trump’s strengths and weaknesses in the 2024 GOP nomination fight, in key respects, resembles his situation in 2016: now, as then, he’s facing resistance from most Republicans with at least a four-year college degree, but polling well among Republicans without one. One key difference from 2016 is that more of the party elite – including elected officials and fundraisers – are openly resisting Trump, fearing that Democrats are right in their prevailing belief he cannot win again. Partially for that reason, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, if he runs, may be better positioned than any of Trump’s 2016 rivals to consolidate the GOP voters skeptical of him (though he’s hardly guaranteed of success in that).
The possibility that Trump could face a criminal indictment – either on the evidence the January 6 committee detailed on Monday or separate investigations from the Justice Department on his stockpiling of classified documents and the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney on his efforts to overturn the election there – adds another new wrinkle. Veteran conservative strategist Bill Kristol, now a staunch Trump critic, says he initially worried that a backlash from rank-and-file GOP voters against any indictment might boost Trump; now Kristol believes it will only compound the sense he carries too much baggage to win another general election.
If DeSantis or another alternative beats Trump, the GOP will confront a pair of bookended risks. One is that Trump openly disparages and undermines the eventual nominee – in the most extreme case by launching a third-party general election bid. The other is that the eventual winner beats Trump only by, in effect, out-Trumping him in on culture war issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights, gun control, immigration, the coronavirus response and other issues. (DeSantis has already given indications he may pursue that strategy.) That could leave the nominee little (if any) more marketable than Trump himself in the white-collar suburbs from Pennsylvania to Arizona that have trended sharply away from the GOP since his emergence.
2. How do voters assess the economy? Democrats defied history in 2022 by running unexpectedly well even though about three-fourths of voters expressed negative views about the economy, according to exit polls. But that’s not an experiment any Democrat would want to repeat in 2024.
Voter attitudes about the economy in 2024 will likely hinge on their reaction to the trade-off the Federal Reserve Board is imposing through its repeated interest rate hikes: lower inflation for higher unemployment and less growth. At its December meeting, the Fed forecast that inflation would ease significantly in 2023 (and decline further through 2024) but unemployment would tick up to 4.6% across both years and overall economic growth would slow sharply enough to leave the economy on the edge of recession through next year.
There’s some evidence more Americans would prefer that to the opposite conditions that have prevailed over the past two years: robust growth and an extremely strong job market coupled with the highest inflation in four decades. In a CBS poll earlier this year, far more adults cited inflation and high gas prices than the unemployment rate as the reason they were unhappy about the economy. “Something approaching 100% of the electorate experiences the high cost of living and a much smaller fraction experiences unemployment or even job insecurity at any given time,” says Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist. “So, if you had to pick your poison, an economy with a lower cost of living and a slightly higher rate of unemployment, is probably more manageable.”
Still, that’s not guaranteed: when an October CNBC poll asked directly whether the Fed should prioritize reducing inflation or protecting jobs, a slight plurality picked the latter. In any case, almost all political analysts agree that more important to the election’s outcome than the absolute level of those economic indicators will be whether they are improving or deteriorating, particularly in the spring and summer of the election year, when many voters lock in their verdict on the economy. The classic example came in 1984, when Ronald Reagan’s 49 state landslide was fueled by a rapid decline in unemployment, even though it still exceeded 7% on Election Day.
3. Do voters consider Biden still up to the job? Before the midterm election, the key question surrounding Joe Biden might have been whether he would face a serious primary challenge, which often has foreshadowed defeat for an incumbent president. But the Democrats’ relatively strong showing in the midterm has virtually eliminated that possibility and left the president “very clearly in a pretty good place” within the party, notes Garin.
Yet, despite the Democrats’ unexpectedly strong performance, the midterms showed warning signs for Biden among the broader electorate: a solid majority in the exit polls said they disapproved of his job performance, and two-thirds of voters said they did not want him to run again.
Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, three other presidents who faced widespread discontent early in their presidencies, saw their approval rating rise as they neared reelection when attitudes about the economy improved. If inflation recedes, that same current could lift Biden (whose approval rating already has ticked up since his party’s midterm showing). What’s unknown is how many voters, even if they feel better about the economy, still will consider Biden too old (he’ll turn 82 shortly after the 2024 election) or diminished for the office. Any visible health problem between now and then would obviously exacerbate those concerns.
Most Americans now appear to view elections for the White House and Congress less as a choice between two individuals than between which party they want to set the nation’s direction, a dynamic that will limit the political impact of judgments about Biden’s personal capacity. But, even in such an increasingly parliamentary environment, Biden will likely need to convince a critical slice of swing voters that he can effectively perform the job before they reelect him to it.
4. Can either party reverse the electoral trends benefiting the other? On balance, the 2022 election reaffirmed the basic lines of demographic and geographic division between the parties evident in the 2020 results.
Relative to 2020, the Democrats’ performance eroded at least somewhat among most key groups – not surprisingly in a midterm while they held the White House, especially against the backdrop of a four-decade high in inflation. But, overall, the party mostly preserved the same coalition of voters who turned out in decisive numbers to oppose Trump in 2018 and 2020 – young people, people of color, college-educated White voters, secular and LGBTQ adults, and residents of the largest metropolitan areas, with women in each group usually leaning more markedly toward them.
Behind that coalition, Democrats beat every Trump-backed Senate and gubernatorial candidate in the five states that decided the 2020 election by flipping to Biden after backing Trump in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. Those winning Democratic candidates all prevailed by bigger margins than Biden did two years earlier – a stunning divergence from the usual pattern of the president’s party losing ground in midterms.
Those results suggest the shift of white-collar suburbs in those states away from the GOP means Democrats enter 2024 with an edge, though not an insurmountable one, in the Electoral College. The other good news for Democrats: Millennials and Generation Z, who continued to back them in large numbers, will comprise well over-two-fifths of eligible voters in 2024 and likely, for the first time, exceed the baby boom and older generations among actual voters, according to calculations by the non-partisan States of Change Project. “The Republicans really are talking to an older shrinking population,” says Brookings Metro demographer William Frey, who helped calculate those projections. “It is still big in a lot of places, but it is now being countered by this youthful and more diverse population and they are going to pay a price if they don’t adjust their policies and messaging.”
The key demographic unknown for Democrats may be whether they can continue to inspire the relatively higher turnout among the younger generations that have boosted them over the past three elections. The key unknown for Republicans in 2024 may be whether they can regain ground in the well-educated and racially diversifying suburbs of the five Trump-to-Biden states.
Some Republican strategists see a model in Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s relatively stronger performance in the Atlanta suburbs after a term in which he advanced a staunchly conservative agenda (including signing a six-week abortion ban) but demonstrated his independence by rejecting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election there. Georgia showed that the suburban voters now rejecting the Trump-stamped GOP “can go back and forth depending on the quality of the candidate and the kind of campaign they run,” says long-time GOP pollster Whit Ayres.
5. Does the Republican-majority House do more damage to Biden – or to the GOP? The incoming GOP majority has already set a confrontational course toward Biden. It has promised an array of investigations (starting with the business activities of his son, Hunter Biden, and potentially including the treatment of the January 6 insurrectionists), warned that it may impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (as well as possibly other officials) and already laid plans to threaten a default on the federal debt to demand cuts in federal spending, including potentially Social Security and Medicare.
These are all causes that could energize the GOP base for 2024. And a sweeping dragnet of House investigations might unearth uncomfortable revelations for the Biden Administration about its handling of the border, its dispersal of funds from the infrastructure and climate change bills, or other issues.
But Democrats are strikingly confident that on balance the narrow GOP House majority will do more damage to the Republican brand by instigating political fights distant from the daily concerns of most Americans and by elevating divisive figures like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio who are poised to reinforce the image of Trump-affiliated extremism that hurt Republicans in 2022. Simon Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist who was the most prominent public skeptic of the “red wave” theory in 2022, previewed that line of attack on Monday when he tweeted a list of controversies swirling around Trump and the Republican Party and declared: “GOP all MAGA, all the time.”
Other “known unknowns” could send ripples through the 2024 campaign-including a decisive outcome (that favors either side) in the Ukraine war, Supreme Court decisions on election rules and the crime trends in major cities. And even these prospects don’t exclude what Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknowns” – the possibilities “we don’t know [that] we don’t know,” as he put it then. Uncertainty is unavoidable in a contest as consuming as a modern presidential race. But, even so, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outcome of the five “known unknowns” listed above decide the outcome.
I would also say that the pandemic picking up in China is also a known unknown that could affect the world on a public health level (variants have a huge new under-vaccinated opportunity) and in terms of the world economy. If China is seriously impacted, we all will be.
Also, there are all the unknown, unknowns. Anything — and I mean anything can happen. 2016 proved that.
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This week, battered Ukrainian defense forces mounted a counterattack against Russian troops stalled in their advance.
President Joe Biden has returned from his trip to Europe after launching a verbal counterattack against autocracy, with echoes meant for autocratic movements on this side of the Atlantic and inside U.S. borders.
His speech in Warsaw Saturday still reverberates across the globe. It was a stinging indictment of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a reminder to the Russian people that they are not the enemies of the western alliance. But “the forces of autocracy have revived all across the globe” over the last several decades, he warned, showing “contempt for the rule of law, contempt for democratic freedom, contempt for the truth itself.” Ukraine stands at the front lines of “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”
The ideological battle, Biden said, “will not be easy. There will be costs. But it’s a price we have to pay. Because the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he ended. Whether ad-libbed or planned, the White House later walked back that line, claiming that the U.S. was not calling for regime change.
Jennifer Rubin suggested Biden deliver a similar speech at home to make more explicit the threat posed by “a right-wing movement that also thinks ‘might makes right,’ that also shows contempt for a free press and elections, and that does not understand the bedrock principle of democratic elections: When you lose you allow the victor to govern.”
The Trump movement’s attempt to invade the U.S. Capitol and turn out the legitimate government of this country failed on Jan. 6. Trump’s influence seems to be on the wane. But it is wise to remember former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s June 2003 comment that what was left of Iraqi resistance were only “dead-enders.” Authoritarian forces here have stalled but not surrendered.
The other verbal counterattack against them last week came from Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. His stirring speech to SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown came after she’d endured two days of abuse by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was, like Biden’s defense of democratic values, a counter-narrative to the conservatives’ negative patriotism, writes Theodore R. Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice:
One narrative told of an American patriotism, born of hardship and optimism and incremental progress, oriented on our nation’s professed ideals. The other professed a patriotism that is combative, subsisting on the identification of adversaries and promoting the constant presence of threat — an inward-facing intolerant form of nationalism. The former is expansive, inclusive and unifying; the latter, narrow, restricted and privileged. With race still central to national policy debates, the hearings presented Americans with these differing versions of what it means to love our country. The week gave us a taste of both and tacitly demanded that we identify which we prefer.
On the home front as well as in Ukraine, the forces of autocracy have stalled and their advance reversed for now (CNN):
Five recent surveys have indicated strong support for President Joe Biden’s decision to nominate Jackson for the Supreme Court seat retiring Justice Stephen Breyer is vacating. According to an average of polls by Gallup, Fox, Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University and the Pew Research Center, about 53% of Americans supported her confirmation, with about 26% of Americans opposed. This is good for a +27-point net popularity rating.
If Jackson’s ratings hold up through her likely confirmation, she would be the most popular nominee to be confirmed since John Roberts in 2005. Jackson’s popularity should only help her in the confirmation process.
This ideological battle, here and abroad, will not be easy, as Biden said. There will be setbacks. But there is still hope.
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Former Donald Trump advisor and “Trippie” Stephen K. Bannon is set to turn himself in to federal authorities this morning after being indicted Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress.
Already Republicans are plotting their revenge:
Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.
“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggested that Republicans would seek payback if the GOP regained control of the House, signaling that in challenging the doctrine of executive privilege, Democrats were making it easier for Republicans to force Biden’s top advisers to testify before a future GOP Congress.
Not only did the email lady not refuse to endure an 11-hour grilling by the Republicans’ Benghazi committee, but it’s unlikely anyone from the Biden administration would. It is hard to bring contempt of Congress charges against cooperating witnesses, but Jordan may try.
For Republican “hoaxers” who need their short memories refreshed, this report from late 2019:
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team indicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies during their lengthy investigation.
That group is composed of six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Seven of these people (including five of the six former Trump advisers) have pleaded guilty.
If you also count investigations that Mueller originated but then referred elsewhere in the Justice Department, you can add a plea deal from one more person to the list.
More short memories:
Prevagen-deficient Grassley does not remember (or conveniently forgets) that the conservative Washington Free Beacon backed by New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer “originally funded the research firm” (Fusion GPS) behind the Steele dossier. “Steele didn’t begin work on the project until after Democratic groups took over the funding.“
This complaint comes from the same Republican Party that brought you “yellowcake uranium,” Iraqi “unmanned aerial vehicles [for dispersing] chemical or biological weapons” and targeting the United States, “high-strength aluminum tubes,” a “smoking gun…in the form of a mushroom cloud,” “mobile biological agent factories,” “yellowcake uranium,” and that the Iraq War would cost no more than $50-$60 billion and take “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly [not] any longer than that.” And finally, that there were diabolical WMDs the administration would soon find “in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” Kinda sorta.
Remind friends and family at Thanksgiving just who is crying “Hoax!” now.
From one of my favorite newsletter, Roy Edroso Breaks It Down. He collected some quotes from the right wing id:
Rep. Charlie Beetroot (R.-Ar.): “After a mere 20 years — not even two dozen! — the treasonous son of a I-won’t-say-it Joe Biden has cut and run from our beloved Afghanistan. I have more reason than most to mourn this betrayal: Years ago one of my constituents gave me an Afghan rug, and my wife and I liked it so much we gladly endured a tiresome ethics investigation so we could keep it. The rug came with the address of the rugmakers in Adraskan, two brothers named Abdul and Amos O’Grady. They were originally from Poughkeepsie, but their parents loved Afghanistan and moved the family business there. I wrote to them and we became fast friends. Abdul and Amos were apparently masters of ‘baksheesh,’ which they told me was what Afghans call the art of persuasion, and they managed to visit me very frequently in Washington and Hattieville no matter what was going on ‘back home.’ Of course they loved America — even on their short visits, they managed to catch up on all the American trends and wore all the latest outlet fashions; you’d think they actually lived here full-time! — and supported our troops 100%. I am holding a telegram from them now and I am shaking with rage. They are trapped in Adraskan by Biden’s fecklessness and they need $500,000 US to get out. I have raised some of that with a Kickstarter but it’s not enough, so I have introduced a bill to allocate federal funds to get out Amos and Abdul and the many others who have been left behind, like Seamus and Abas Schwartz, Hameed McGillicuddy, and Mary Jane Smith-Wharton, to name just a few. America will not soon forget the day of shame!”
Caroline Screamer Bayes (R.-Mo.): “I hope you’re proud of yourself, Joe Biden. Like the traitors Obama and Clinton before you, you have turned your back on billions of good men and women who trusted us when Donald Trump was President and still is except you stole it, you traitor! Look at this picture if you dare, you coward-in-chief! It’s a picture of the last true Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, with a simple Afghan tribesman:
“This brave man came all the way here to visit because he loved and trusted President Trump; he even wore a surgical mask, not because he believed in the fake COVID plandemic, but to honor his hosts, because honor is important to these people, Mr. Not My President! Now can you imagine, Joe Biden, what that simple Afghan farmer thinks, wherever he is? He’s probably surrounded by Taliban right now! Imagine what he’s thinking! He probably laughs when he thinks of America. And whose fault is that, Joe Biden? Yours and the fault of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Jew-mer and your cackling I-won’t-say-it not-my-Vice-President. And that’s why we’re going to bring our brave boys back to the Capitol to murder all the Democrats and RINOs and then we’re coming to kill you, Joe Biden, and your whole family, we’re going to cut you to pieces with an axe and grind those pieces into the carpet and spit on them and set fire to the EPA and Lincoln Center and all the Deep State fortresses where the pedophiles are hiding out, and I’m going to keep on saying it because nobody ever does anything about me saying it which must mean everyone agrees!”
Christopher Hitchens (contacted by Ouija board): “I might have said ‘that I should live to see this day,’ except of course I haven’t. You can imagine how long I’ve been waiting to use that joke. I would also like to say that conditions here are not so dire as advertised, especially if you did some good in the surface world; I, for example, suffer very little physical pain, owing to my denunciation of torture. Our new arrival Donald Rumsfeld is having quite a different experience. The funny part is, I only did it to preserve my credibility with the higher-paying magazines. Oh shit, I think they heard me.”
If you read any of Trump’s dispatches or watch his interviews on Fox you’ll see that this is barely satire.
His newsletter is great. Subscribe if you can. You won’t regret it.
The New York Times’ Alissa J. Rubin recalls the early days of the Afghanistan invasion:
Taliban fighters brandished Kalashnikovs and shook their fists in the air after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defying American warnings that if they did not hand over Osama Bin Laden, their country would be bombed to smithereens.
The bravado faded once American bombs began to fall. Within a few weeks, many of the Taliban had fled the Afghan capital, terrified by the low whine of approaching B-52 aircraft. Soon, they were a spent force, on the run across the arid mountain-scape of Afghanistan. As one of the journalists who covered them in the early days of the war, I saw their uncertainty and loss of control firsthand.
It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.
“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.
Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.
But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.
That was the hubris that brought us to this day. And keep in mind, as they were spewing that drivel they were already planning for the invasion of Iraq. The whole country was febrile, over-stimulated, not the least of whom were in the press corps. It was craaazy. And here we are.
Sam Seder and I talked about Don Rumsfeld’s “legacy” on my weekly hit on Ring of Fire podcast. I brought up the sycophantic behavior of the press corps during that awful period and today I was reminded of what it might have looked like if the US press had performed real journalism instead. This is from the BBC in March of 2003 at the beginning of the invasion:
David Dimbleby: Mr Rumsfeld, does the stepping up of attacks on Iraqi positions in the no-fly zone mean, in your view, that war is now pretty much inevitable?
Donald Rumsfeld: No, I don’t see the connection really. In fact, I’m not even positive that there has been a particular step-up in the number of attacks. What – we do, the United Kingdom and the United States, have what we call response options. And when there’s some sort of an indication of aggressiveness in the northern or southern no fly zone, then we tend to respond and deal with some aspect, generally, of the air defence system.
DD: Has Saddam done anything in these last few weeks to make you think war is less likely?
DR: Not really. I think the key is whether or not one comes to develop a conviction that he’s co-operating. In other words, it isn’t ‘Do the inspectors find things’, because they’re not discoverers or finders. It’s really, is this – during this period of inspections, is he demonstrating that he has, in fact, thrown in the towel and is going to cooperate?
DD: Doesn’t the destruction of al-Samoud missiles daily suggest that he has done that?
DR: Well, I suppose to some it might. On the other hand, every single thing that he does that anyone could cite as co-operative was after some long period of denying, a refusal to do it, and ultimately a willingness to do part of it. And it is such a reluctant process that it would take so many years to ever really believe you’ve done the task of disarming.
DD: But even so, if you’ve got the inspectors there, if you’ve got Hans Blix talking about this as a very significant bit of disarmament, haven’t you got him by the tail, so that as long as the inspectors are there, as long as Blix is there, he can’t really do much damage to anyone?
DR: Well, I think that the way to think about that is that there were inspectors there before, and he continued with his weapons of mass destruction programmes. And the way he did it is he’s learned how to live in a, so to speak, in an inspections environment.
DD: But you’re not saying with all your troops there, with the overflying you have, with the satellite information, that he could seriously go on creating weapons of mass destruction, though?
DR: Oh, sure. He does things underground. He’s very skilful at denial and deception. There’s no doubt in my mind but that he has weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and has been working on nuclear weapons.
DD: The Deputy Weapons Inspector, Perricos, says that “the presence of inspectors in the country” – I quote him – “is preventing any prohibited activities from being regenerated.” You think he’s wrong?
DR: I would think that it’s a very hard statement for him to make because he doesn’t have access to the underground systems and the tunnelling and the skill that they have in deceiving. I mean, if you think of the number of Iraqi minders, people, tenders, they go along with the inspectors.
If you think of the fact that we’ve not been able to get people outside the country with their families so that they could talk honestly. If you think about the declaration that was submitted, which everyone agreed was fraudulent. It is – it would be difficult for me to make that statement.
DD: You’re sceptical about the inspectors and their role altogether?
DR: Well, I wouldn’t say altogether. I think inspections can work. They can work with a co-operative country, like they did with South Africa or Kazakhstan, or any other country that decided that it was in their interest to disarm. And what they really were looking for was not someone to come in and discover things, but they were looking for someone to come in and prove to the world that they had, in fact, disarmed. That’s a very different thing. So there’s a good role for inspectors, and I think during this period people have to make a judgment about that.
DD: But, frankly, can you see, from your point of view, any disarmament in Iraq that would satisfy you if it had happened without Saddam going, or, in effect, does Saddam have to go, from your point of view?
DR: Well, my point of view is not very important.
DD: Why not?
DR: Because it’s the president of the United States that’s going to make those judgments, and certainly not me. My task is quite different. [US Secretary of State] Colin Powell is the one working with the inspectors, and the Central Intelligence Agency is co-operating with it, as are other intelligence agencies in the world. And at some point, they will then make a judgment as to whether or not he’s co-operating.
DD: So what do you make of the countries I mean, let’s take France, for example, who are very strong on this point, that the inspectors should be given more time because they’re yielding results. There are a lot of people around the world who believe that’s the truth. You take the opposite view. You say it’s not really yielding anything. They say it’s yielding, give it more time. What’s your reaction?
DR: I think these are tough issues, and people can differ on them. And what we in the United States have decided is that we should give them more time. And that’s what’s been going on.
DD: How much more time?
DR: It’s been months. It’s been months since the United States took this issue to the United Nations. If you think back, the United Nations has had this for 11 years, 12 years. And everyone seemed very comfortable with the fact that these kinds of dual-use technologies and capabilities were flowing back and forth across his border with no one bothering to stop them, and until the president of the United States said, wait a minute, this isn’t right; this is dangerous.
And then there was a unanimous Security Council resolution. I think it was back in October, if I’m not mistaken. And he said let’s give ’em time. But the idea that he was in a box, as they used to say, that he was contained, just wasn’t a fact. He was proceeding apace.
And if you think of the idea of containment with respect to the old Soviet Union, time was on our side because they had a system that was coming apart in the centre. In this case, the time is really not on the international community’s side, because these weapons programs have been proceeding.
DD: But, of course, people would say that you are one of those people who always thought Saddam had to go anyway and said as much five years ago and that really events have played into your hands with 11 September. You never had any intention, if you got into the position you’re in now, of seeing Saddam remain in power in Iraq.
DR: I think that over a period of 12 years, or if you want to go back a few years, eight years, an awful lot of people in the world did come to the conclusion that he, as a regime leader, was an unlikely candidate to decide that it was in his country’s interest and his interest to voluntarily disarm. And that’s the reason that in 1998 the Congress of the United States, Republicans and Democrats alike, passed legislation calling for a regime change.
DD: So what do you say to what the French are putting forward? You need more time, things are working. I mean, the French Foreign Minister yesterday, for instance, and I know your view of France is that it’s old Europe and you don’t really count it or rank it very high. But he said, you can’t –
DR: I don’t know that you ought to be putting words in my mouth.
DD: Well, you called them old Europe; I didn’t.
DR: What I did was, I was asked a question about Europe being opposed to the US position. And my response was that there were a couple of countries that were opposed and that a large number of countries were supportive. The eight countries had already signed, and 10 countries later signed, and I said the centre of gravity is shifting in Europe. I was thinking of Nato when I said old Europe. I was thinking old Nato, because the next sentence, old Nato is at 15, the new Nato is at 26 countries, and the centre of gravity has shifted. It was not disparaging of any of those countries. Those countries are allies with us in Nato.
DD: So were you surprised they got so upset by it? I mean –
DR: Well, I was.
DD: [French President] Mr Chirac was extremely upset by this.
DR: Yeah, I was surprised, to be very honest. It was – I mean, I served as ambassador to Nato. I’ve got a great many friends in both of those countries, and I think that it is more an indication of a sensitivity that surprised me.
DD: Well, they’re sensitive because you don’t take their argument seriously.
DR: Well, of course we do. If the people said there should be more time, the president has given them more time.
DD: Well, let’s just go back to the French Foreign Minister and what he said yesterday. You can’t say “I want Saddam to disarm”, and at the same time when he is disarming saying they’re not doing what they should. I mean, a lot of people in Europe, and I suspect a lot of people in this country from what one hears, think that is the case and think that you are piling on the pressure because whatever happens you want – you don’t want war, but you want to get rid of Saddam, and that’s really what’s behind it.
DR: Well, I suppose anyone can decide what they think is behind it and what motives are. The president of the United States is very clear on what his intent is. What his words say is what he means. And he said it very clearly, and he’s provided leadership on this. And he has said to the international community and to our Congress that he really believes it’s important that Iraq be disarmed. It is not the job of the Secretary of Defence to be involved in those issues. I’m not. You keep saying, you, but I suppose you mean you, the United States.
DD: No, I see you as part of the senior part of the administration as well as Secretary of Defence, indeed.
DR: I am, sure. But the job of a Secretary of Defence is quite different than making those judgments. Those judgments are judgments the president makes, and I work for the president. And I happen to agree with his statements, and I support him.
DD: Are people who want to defer war appeasers?
DR: No, I’ve never used that word. I think these are very tough issues. I think that the 21st Century is a different century. We’re in a different security environment. And people have got to think through what it means, what this new security environment means. And I think probably one of the differences is that the United States was the country that was attacked on September 11.
And so there is a great deal of support for the president’s position. It wasn’t some of the European countries that was attacked on September 11, and their publics and their leadership look at this somewhat differently. It seems to me that that’s to be expected when you take very difficult issues about the fact that we could have a September 11 where not 3,000 people were killed, but maybe 30,000 could be killed, or 300,000 could be killed. And then the question is, well, what do you do about that, and those are big ideas. They’re big concerns. And people need time to discuss them. So using words like you used, and I did not –
DD: The Prime Minister of Britain used the words, not me, about appeasers. I mean he used it in the context of the way that people treated Hitler, and he said the appeasers may have been well-intentioned, but they were wrong.
DR: Well, there’s no question but that people in that period who were looking for a peaceful way with Adolf Hitler were proven wrong.
DD: Can we come to –
DR: At great expense.
DD: Can we come to where things stand at the moment? The administration is now seeking backing for a second resolution. It’s also saying that if it doesn’t get the second resolution, it’s going to ignore the UN Is this a credible position to hold?
DR: You’re asking me is the president’s position credible, and I would say yes, not surprisingly. It seems to me that what he said when he went in to the United Nations was that he thought it was important that the world engaged this issue because it’s a big issue, an important issue, and it’s an issue that we’re going to be faced with in this century.
He also said that, needless to say, member states reserve the right of self-defence, and, therefore, he wanted to bring it into the United Nations and have them address this, but that by doing so he did not want anyone to believe that he would, as a country, make a conscious decision that he would forego the right of any member state to self-defence.
DD: In what way is Iraq a threat to the United States that would allow it to act in self-defence of American interests?
DR: The issue that’s before the world, it seems to me, is the pervasiveness of weapons of mass destruction and the spread of these, the proliferation of these technologies, chemical and biological weapons, increasingly nuclear weapons. We could in 10 years have double the number of nuclear powers in the world.
The situation with Iraq is that we’re at the end of the string. We’ve tried diplomacy for 12 years. We’ve tried economic sanctions, and they have not worked. The effort on the part of the international community to prevent him from having those things that enable him to develop those capabilities failed. And he was not contained, and he was not in a box. And even limited military action in the north and the south has really not done it.
The critical issue is the relationship between weapons of terrorist states, which Iraq is, by everyone’s agreement –
DD: America took it off the list of terror states 20 years ago.
DR: I don’t know that. I accept –
DD: When you – when you – sorry. When you visited Iraq and negotiated with Saddam Hussein, when America wanted Saddam Hussein for its own purposes, America took Iraq off the list of terrorist states and, indeed, supplied it with the wherewithal to make the chemical weapons they’re now trying to remove.
DR: I’ve read that type of thing, but I don’t know where you get your information, and I don’t believe it’s correct. They may have been taken off. I was a private businessman. I was asked for a few months to assist after the 241 Marines were killed in Beirut, Lebanon. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein. I did not give him or sell him or bring him any chemical weapons or any biological weapons, as some of the European press likes to print. It’s just factually not true.
Now, whether or not the United States at some point, when I was not part of the government, decided to take him off a terrorist list, you may be right. In fact, I –
DD: Are you saying you don’t know, you didn’t know when you went there whether he was on the list of terror states or not? You were trying to reopen –
DR: I believe he was.
DD: – a relationship between the United States and Iraq.
DR: That’s right. And I believe he was on the list of terrorist states when I went there.
DD: We’re being diverted a bit here, but let’s just go into this, because it’s another of the causes of a lack of credibility, or a credibility gap that you particularly have to fill, that you were there and met the man.
DR: I was there with the President and Secretary Shultz to meet with him and to see it was one of the few Middle Eastern countries that had not re-established relationships with the United States after the earlier Middle East war.
DD: But you aren’t saying that you weren’t aware that he was using chemical weapons, because the Secretary of State at the time had said they were using them.
DR: I was certainly aware of that. I didn’t say I wasn’t aware of that. I said I was not aware that the United States gave him, as you suggested, or I gave him, and that I had some burden to bear. That’s just utter nonsense.
DD: I’m not suggesting you had a burden to bear. I was saying that there was one of the reasons you lacked –
DR: You said you particularly.
DD: No, you went and talked to the man.
DR: I did.
DD: But what I’m suggesting is that the United States in the world outside, over and over again people say, well, now they’re trying to get rid of the weapons, as Jesse Jackson put it when he was at Hyde Park Corner a week ago, for which the United States has the receipts. I mean, that’s the problem, that you created this monster, evil, as you know –
DR: You who?
DD: You, the United States, not you personally.
DR: Well, first of all, you’re wrong. If you look at the record of the European countries, and the other technologically advanced countries of the world and the relationships with Iraq, I think you’ll find that the United States ranks relatively low in terms of trading with Iraq and assisting Iraq with respect to weapons. I think that’s correct. I don’t have the data, but I think you’ll find that’s the case. And I think, furthermore, that if at some point a ground truth is achieved, it will be embarrassing to countries that have been providing Saddam Hussein’s regime with a great deal of those technologies.
DD: Can I come back to UN and the second resolution? Is one of the reasons for that, or indeed perhaps the sole reason for that to keep Tony Blair on side, the British Prime Minister, in the difficulties that he has politically at home?
DR: Well, again, you’re out of my lane in terms of the subject matter. But I don’t doubt for a minute but that the fine job and leadership that Prime Minster Blair has been providing on this subject in the world is something that’s very much on President Bush’s mind. And when you’re working with other countries, as he is, he obviously wants to work in a way that’s helpful to the leaders of other countries who are trying to work together on it. I keep reading that the United States is unilateralist and that we’re ‘Going it alone’. There will be more countries, with or without a second UN resolution, involved in a coalition of the willing, if force has to be used, than there were in the 1991 Gulf War, in my judgement.
DD: Assuming war does come, will it be short, as the British Defence Secretary suggested at the weekend?
DR: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there’re so many unknowns in war, and so many dangers, and so many things that can go wrong, one – you know, one would hope so. And certainly there’s no question but that Saddam Hussein is a repressive regime, and one has to believe that people would rather not be repressed, and that therefore there will be people who, as was the case in 1991, who surrendered and who came over to the other side, and who were relieved and felt liberated rather than having some reason to want to fight for the Saddam Hussein regime. I think that’s the hope.
DD: Is Saddam Hussein’s death or capture a war aim?
DR: A war aim? My aim would be that there would not be a war, that, in fact, there would be some way that it could be avoided, and that’s still my hope. Now, how might that happen? One would be that he would decide to co-operate, which he hasn’t thus far. A second would be that he would decide to leave the country. A third would be that there could be a coup against him.
Now, any one of those would be preferable if the alternative to him was somebody who wanted to co-operate and see that the country was disarmed, who didn’t want to have weapons of mass destruction, who didn’t want to threaten its neighbours, who didn’t want to use chemicals on its own people, or its neighbours, didn’t want to fire ballistic missiles into four of his neighbouring countries, and who did want to liberate the people of Iraq and allow some sort of representation and the end of repression.
DD: Is there a danger, do you think, that Saddam Hussein will use these very weapons of mass destruction that you think he still has in the event of war?
DR: Certainly there’s a danger. He could use them on coalition forces. He could use them on neighbouring countries. He could use them on his own people and try to blame it on the coalition.
DD: How damaging to the war plans is Turkey’s refusal to let their bases be used?
DR: There are workarounds. We’ll be fine. Turkey is a democracy, it’s a moderate Muslim country, it’s a friend, it’s an ally in Nato, and they’re going through a democratic process, and we accept that. My guess is that when all is said and done we’ll have some degree of co-operation from them, as we do from many of the states in that region.
DD: Can I come to the question which seems to me to be at the heart of all this, of the credibility of the United States’ position, which clearly exercises the British Prime Minister, the American President and the administration, and one hears a lot of doubt cast on America’s motives for this. Do you think you’d win more backing in the outside world if you’d spent a fraction of the time on the Israeli-Palestinian problem as you’ve spent on Iraq?
DR: Well, probably. I think that the president and Secretary Powell have worked on the Palestinian, Arab-Israeli problem a good deal in the past two years. They have the president’s made several speeches on the subject, Secretary Powell has been involved, there’ve been special envoys involved. That is a problem that’s a tough one, and it’s been a tough one my entire adult lifetime, and that it has not been solved in the last 20 months ought not to be a surprise to anybody. The president cares about it; he is concerned about it; he has addressed it. And I think that had there been success there, there would have been, possibly, greater support.
On the other hand, the implication of your question is that there is not great support, and there is great support. There are a very large number of nations that will be participating in a coalition of the willing in the event Saddam Hussein refuses to co-operate and force has to be used.
DD: And yet America is seen as applying double standards in this, isn’t it? I mean, using the UN against Iraq, for instance, and then you yourself saying – repeating two or three times, in the context of Israel and the UN resolutions there, that the occupied territories on the West Bank are so-called occupied territories. That’s the kind of thing that makes people think, well, actually America is not serious about this, they’re so pro-Israel that they’re not.
DR: Interesting –
DD: Well, you said that.
DR: Well, first of all, I did not repeat it two or three times. You’re just factually wrong.
DD: You said it twice in the same series of remarks. You used the expression “so-called”.
DR: Fair enough. I was in a meeting, and I was asked a question, and the phrase came out.
DD: But is it what you think that they’re so-called occupied, or do you think they’re occupied and should be given up?
DR: I think that that’s what a negotiation is going to solve. I mean, that is what the negotiation is about. Obviously Israel has offered to give back a major portion of the occupied territories. We know that. The agreement was there. It could have been solved if Arafat had accepted it. He didn’t.
DD: But your use of the word “so-called”.
DR: If it bothered you, then don’t use it.
DD: It’s not me it bothers. It’s the other Arab states it bothers.
DR: Well, don’t you agree that the purpose of a negotiation is to decide those things? It seems to me that’s fairly reasonable. Israel has offered to give up a major percentage of the occupied territories.
DD: Let me ask you about America’s position in all this. The president has talked about the axis of evil. If there is a war against Iraq, if it’s prosecuted successfully, do you, as Defence Secretary, then have plans for further military action, for instance against Iran, perhaps?
DR: No, my hope is that Iran will – first of all, the Pentagon has to have plans that the president asks it to have. But that is not what’s happening. My hope there is that, in the case of Iran, that the people of Iran – I don’t think that they’re terribly enamoured of the small group clerics that are running that country. And there are stirrings in the women and the young people. And I would suspect that at some point those stirrings will end up changing that system in some way.
DD: A regime change will happen there. But I want to ask you this. Are you saying you have –
DR: Don’t put those words in my mouth.
DD: Alright. Are you suggesting a regime change?
DR: No, I’m suggesting exactly what I said, that the women and young people in that country that are uncomfortable with the rule of the small handful of clerics are stirring, and that at some point my guess is they will accomplish some sort of a change in how that system works.
DD: Do you have any plans for any further military activity apart from in Iraq in the Middle East?
DR: First of all, we don’t discuss military plans. And, second, plans are plans. Our obligation in any ministry of defence in the world is to look at potential threats and capabilities that can threaten your country and develop appropriate contingencies. That’s what we do. That’s our job.
You’re asking a question that should be asked the president – does he has anything specific that he intends to do in the event force has to be used in Iraq? And that’s a question for the president to answer. But I can say this, he does intend to, very definitely, continue to pursue the global war on terrorism, which, in fact, he has been doing. We’ve got 90 nations in a coalition – it’s probably the largest coalition in the history of mankind – that are participating in a variety of different ways to try to track down terrorist networks and stop them from killing innocent men, women and children. And that’s a good thing to be doing. And there are a number of places in the Middle East where those terrorists are finding havens. Iran is one of the countries.
DD: You say –
DR: And Iraq is one of the countries.
DD: So Iran should be in your sights on those grounds?
DR: I wouldn’t use words like the hot button words like that, “in your sights”. I think that that’s not the case. I like the way I answered your question just fine.
DD: You say that’s a good thing. Aren’t people, though, right to be suspicious who aren’t Americans of one country, in effect, shaping the world to suit itself, to suit its own values?
DR: No. No. Well, first of all, now you’re back to one country, as though the United States is acting unilaterally. In the global war on terrorism there are 90 nations. Never in the history of mankind have there been that many countries working together on exactly the same –
DD: I’m only thinking about what the president said. “The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others” – i.e. it’s true you have a number now, America will nevertheless go it alone if necessary. He said it.
DR: Yeah. If any leader of any country were to say anything other than that they recognise their responsibility as the leader of those countries to defend those countries, they probably wouldn’t be in office. There’s no question but that the obligation of the president under our Constitution is to defend our country.
DD: “Some of the history of the world and civilization was written by others, the rest will be written by us.” There is a sort of American empire seeming to burgeon here in the language that’s being used.
DR: Interesting. I don’t find it that way. Let me give you an example of why I don’t find it that way. If you think of how powerful and lethal biological weapons are, nuclear weapons are, they can kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. I mean, smallpox put in three locations in a country can kill a million people in a matter of months. Now, that’s a serious problem for the world. There’s nothing the United States can do about that alone. We have to work with other countries. It takes the co-operation of other countries. Other publics have got to engage this issue, other governments have to engage this issue. Look at the problem with North Korea. The United States can’t solve that alone. It takes the co-operation of a lot of countries if we’re going to stop the proliferation of those weapons.
DD: One last question. America is obviously having some difficulty in Europe getting support, and –
DR: Some difficulty? Wait a minute now –
DD: Oh, no. Oh, no –
DR: The overwhelming majority of the countries in Europe are supportive.
DD: One of your key allies, the Spanish Prime Minister, Aznar, says we need a lot of Powell –
DR: I saw that.
DD: – and very little Rumsfeld.
DR: Yeah.
DD: Are you saying things the rest of the administration won’t speak out about? Are you part of the problem of the United States getting the kind of backing it needs?
DR: Well, I doubt it. Certainly the president doesn’t think so. My words are very similar to what he says and what Colin Powell says.
DD: Mr Rumsfeld, thank you very much.
DR: Thank you.
As I write this, from the New York Times:
Donald J. Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, surrendered on Thursday to the Manhattan district attorney’s office as he and the Trump Organization prepared to face charges in connection with a tax investigation, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Prosecutors are expected to unseal indictments later on Thursday against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization itself. Those familiar with the investigation expect criminal charges related to unpaid taxes on benefits for the firm’s executives.
No charges against Donald Trump or his family members are expected at this time. Trump characteristically calls the investigation a “witch hunt.”
Mr. Weisselberg, accompanied by his lawyer, Mary E. Mulligan, walked into the Lower Manhattan building that houses the criminal courts and the district attorney’s office about 6:20 a.m. He is expected to appear in court in the afternoon along with representatives of the Trump Organization.
The charges against the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg — whom Mr. Trump once praised for doing “whatever was necessary to protect the bottom line” — emerged from the district attorney’s sweeping inquiry into the business practices of Mr. Trump and his company.
As part of that inquiry, the prosecutors in the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had been examining whether Mr. Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on valuable benefits he and his family received from Mr. Trump, including private school tuition for at least one of his grandchildren, free apartments and leased cars.
Trump himself facing criminal charges will be the main event. Indictments against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization amount to undercard bouts.
Investigations are ongoing into whether Trump and the Trump Organization manipulated property valuations both for tax and bank loan purposes. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen attested to that under oath before Congress in 2019. Cohen served prison time over undeclared hush-money payments made on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign to conceal Trump’s affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Cohen identified Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in that federal election law case.
The [Weisselberg] indictment follows months of an increasing pressure campaign on Mr. Weisselberg to offer information that could help that inquiry. Prosecutors had subpoenaed Mr. Weisselberg’s personal tax returns and bank records, reviewed a raft of his financial dealings and questioned his ex-daughter-in-law — all part of an effort to gain his cooperation.
Weisselberg, 73, has been tight-lipped with reporters and has resisted requests to provide evidence against his longtime employer. His indictment increases the pressure on Weisselberg and his family. Both Weisselberg and his wife received a leased Mercedes as Trump Organization perks.
In December 2019, the state of New York closed the Trump Foundation for misuse of funds, forced Trump himself to repay funds he spent on himself, and forced the foundation to disburse remaining funds to eight legitimate charities. The N.Y. attorney general’s office concluded its statement:
Additionally, as part of the settlement, Trump was required to agree to 19 admissions, acknowledging his personal misuse of funds at the Trump Foundation, and agreed to restrictions on future charitable service and ongoing reporting to the Office of the Attorney General, in the event he creates a new charity. The settlement also included mandatory training requirements for Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, which the three children have already undergone. Finally, the settlement required the Trump Foundation to shutter its doors last December and dissolve under court supervision.
A Pulitzer-winning New York Times expose in October 2018 examined the late Fred Trump’s business dealings. Based on 100,000 pages of documents, the report detailed a history of the Trump Organization manipulating property values and employing tax avoidance schemes that, while they may have been criminal, fell outside the statute of limitations for charging the Trump Organization or Trump père’s surviving children. Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, nevertheless retired as a federal appellate judge in Philadelphia in early 2019, ending a pending ethics review into whether she had participated with her siblings in evading inheritance taxes. The New York indictments will be the first criminal charges targeting Trump’s family business.
Trump himself is notoriously scrupulous about not using email that might leave “fingerprint” records tying him to the actions of lieutenants such as Cohen or Weisselberg. Suggestions that “the walls are closing in” on Trump himself are premature. Trump has lived his entire life skirting the law if not publicly flaunting it.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s death Wednesday is a reminder that a different justice system exists in this country for elites. Rumsfeld and the Bush administration that employed him were credibly (if informally) accused of committing war crimes for which they faced neither international opprobrium, investigation nor indictment.
Salon’s Paul Rosenberg tweets in response, “Elite impunity is both a cause & consequence of everything from forever wars to mass incarceration to the climate catastrophe & the global resurgence of fascism.”
Wall Street bankers avoided prosecution for bringing the world financial system to its knees and impoverishing their victims in the millions in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse.
“Only one political party was agitating for the violent overthrow of our democracy, and it was the Republican Party. And to this point, they’ve mostly gotten away with it,” writes Kurt Bardella. “Democrats need to stop worrying about hurting GOP feelings and start worrying about what will happen if Republicans believe they can get away with pretty much anything.”
Trump has lived that charmed, elite life for seven-plus decades. Do not hold your breath waiting for him to face the music. In his circles, criminals expect to get away with everything.
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