Thursday, September 18, 2003
Funny Rummy
Donald Rumsfield has had a long and distinguished careers in public service and in business. However, his policy decisions, his behavior and his many public comments has shown that his best years are behind him. He is now 71, perhaps it is time for him to retire and spend some time with his grandkids, because he has become America’s answer to Saddam’s Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, “Comical Ali”
Does everybody remember Comical Ali, the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf who become a cult figure with his wild claims and colorful language.
He would stand before the world, every morning to brief the newsmen on the status of the War. He was Saddam’s man, charged with giving the Iraqi side of the story.
Here is a selection of some of Ali’s quotes:
On an air attack on Najaf, he said: "What they say about a breakthrough [in Najaf] is completely an illusion. They are sending their warplanes to fly very low in order to have vibrations on these sacred places . . . they are trying to crack the buildings by flying low over them."
Early in the campaign, al-Sahhaf accused the Allies of booby-trapping pencils.
"The authority of the civil defense ... issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those pencils because they are booby traps," he said. He added that British and American forces were "immoral mercenaries" and "war criminals".
At one point in the campaign, Al-Sahaf said the Iraqis had "shot down a lot of those cruise missiles" and said the war's impact was "trivial."
Who knew that Rumsfield would become Al-Sahaf’s american counterpart? Maybe Rumsfield has been this way for a while and his recent mega-exposure to the media highlighted the character flaws, which made him into this sad comical figure.
Here are some of the many unfortunate comments he has made:
THE KABUL SITUATION
Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous Ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
WMD IN IRAQ
"It's an enormous country - you know, it's bigger than Texas! [unclear word]'s big, I guess - I haven't looked lately."
"I have so many things to do at the Department of Defense," Rumsfeld said during an interview aboard his plane, which stopped in Ireland to refuel on the way back to Washington. "I made a conscious decision that I didn't need to stay current every 15 minutes on the issue. I literally did not ask. . . . I'm assuming he'll tell me if he'd gotten something we should know."
THE WAR IN IRAQ
'Oh my goodness, the requirement for dumb bombs was about ten times more than we thought we needed, and the requirement for smart bombs was, er, some multiple of what we actually thought we would need ... more - we needed more than we thought - then what you learn from that is that you learn to go back and change the quote requirement - and drop one and increase one."
CLARITY OF COMMUNICATIONS
" You're right, this is very confusing and will continue to be so."
"The only way I know how to reply to that is to give you my blank look!"
I think what you'll find, I think what you'll find is, whatever it is we do substantively, there will be near-perfect clarity. As to what it is.
And it will be known, and it will be known to the Congress, and it will be known to you, Probably before we decide it, but it will be known.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know. There are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
"I believe what I said yesterday ... I don't know what I said, er, but I know what I think, and ... well, I assume it's what I said."
"I'm inclined not to," the secretary replied. "I'll tell you what the situation is: The situation is that it's an important question."
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past - I think the past was not predictable when it started."
"I also know that stating what might be preferable, er, is simply stating what might be preferable."
"Well, um, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose - as Shakespeare said"
"It's like, you know, stirring for troubled waters."
"We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ..... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that."
"For people to waste their time chasing that rabbit, only to run it down and find they've got the wrong rabbit, I think is a shame."
You know, it's the old glass box at the—At the gas station, where you're using those little things trying to pick up the prize, and you can't find it. It's— And it's all these arms are going down in there, And so you keep dropping it And picking it up again and moving it, But— Some of you are probably too young to remember those—Those glass boxes, But they used to have them At all the gas stations When I was a kid.
—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
HIS VIEW OF OUR ALLIES IN IRAQ
"Our allies are over there and we are here. Where would you rather be?"
HIS VIEWS ON WAR SECRECY
"By keeping in this silent mode we prove that our enemies won't know what we're doing any more than we do."
" I wasn't privee to that conversation, I was having sushi."
"Of course Mr. Ashcroft will try to avoid answering that, as I have. It is our right as Americans."
"I can assure you there's plenty of democracy going on behind closed doors."
"Secrecy unto itself is in itself relevant to the situation at hand at the time."
"My assessment of the current problem is for my ears only."
"That is classified beyond all recognition."
"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate ... necessarily accurate ... it might also not be inaccurate, but I mean ... I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."
THE LOCATION OF BIN LADEN
"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."
HIS COMMENTS ON HIS JOB
Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think,” What in the world am I doing here?” It’s a big surprise.
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
THE NEWS MEDIA
You're going to be told lots of things. You get told things every day that don't happen.
It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't— It's printed in the press. The world thinks all these things happen. They never happened. Everyone's so eager to get the story before in fact the story's there that the world is constantly being fed Things that haven't happened. All I can tell you is, it hasn't happened. It's going to happen.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
"The dumbest thing anyone could do would be to stand up here and start previewing things that somebody's thinking about or not thinking about or starting to disabuse you of each thing somebody tells you that we're thinking about, because then the first time we don't disabuse you, you'll say 'aha - that's what they're going to do!'
Donald Rumsfield has delivered his lines with a “dead pan” face of Jack Benny, the language skills of Archie Bunker, and the mind of confused old man. Its time for Play Dough with the grandkids Mr. Rumsfield. You’ve done your time.
Does everybody remember Comical Ali, the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf who become a cult figure with his wild claims and colorful language.
He would stand before the world, every morning to brief the newsmen on the status of the War. He was Saddam’s man, charged with giving the Iraqi side of the story.
Here is a selection of some of Ali’s quotes:
On an air attack on Najaf, he said: "What they say about a breakthrough [in Najaf] is completely an illusion. They are sending their warplanes to fly very low in order to have vibrations on these sacred places . . . they are trying to crack the buildings by flying low over them."
Early in the campaign, al-Sahhaf accused the Allies of booby-trapping pencils.
"The authority of the civil defense ... issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those pencils because they are booby traps," he said. He added that British and American forces were "immoral mercenaries" and "war criminals".
At one point in the campaign, Al-Sahaf said the Iraqis had "shot down a lot of those cruise missiles" and said the war's impact was "trivial."
Who knew that Rumsfield would become Al-Sahaf’s american counterpart? Maybe Rumsfield has been this way for a while and his recent mega-exposure to the media highlighted the character flaws, which made him into this sad comical figure.
Here are some of the many unfortunate comments he has made:
THE KABUL SITUATION
Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous Ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
WMD IN IRAQ
"It's an enormous country - you know, it's bigger than Texas! [unclear word]'s big, I guess - I haven't looked lately."
"I have so many things to do at the Department of Defense," Rumsfeld said during an interview aboard his plane, which stopped in Ireland to refuel on the way back to Washington. "I made a conscious decision that I didn't need to stay current every 15 minutes on the issue. I literally did not ask. . . . I'm assuming he'll tell me if he'd gotten something we should know."
THE WAR IN IRAQ
'Oh my goodness, the requirement for dumb bombs was about ten times more than we thought we needed, and the requirement for smart bombs was, er, some multiple of what we actually thought we would need ... more - we needed more than we thought - then what you learn from that is that you learn to go back and change the quote requirement - and drop one and increase one."
CLARITY OF COMMUNICATIONS
" You're right, this is very confusing and will continue to be so."
"The only way I know how to reply to that is to give you my blank look!"
I think what you'll find, I think what you'll find is, whatever it is we do substantively, there will be near-perfect clarity. As to what it is.
And it will be known, and it will be known to the Congress, and it will be known to you, Probably before we decide it, but it will be known.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know. There are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
"I believe what I said yesterday ... I don't know what I said, er, but I know what I think, and ... well, I assume it's what I said."
"I'm inclined not to," the secretary replied. "I'll tell you what the situation is: The situation is that it's an important question."
"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past - I think the past was not predictable when it started."
"I also know that stating what might be preferable, er, is simply stating what might be preferable."
"Well, um, something's neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, I suppose - as Shakespeare said"
"It's like, you know, stirring for troubled waters."
"We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ..... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that."
"For people to waste their time chasing that rabbit, only to run it down and find they've got the wrong rabbit, I think is a shame."
You know, it's the old glass box at the—At the gas station, where you're using those little things trying to pick up the prize, and you can't find it. It's— And it's all these arms are going down in there, And so you keep dropping it And picking it up again and moving it, But— Some of you are probably too young to remember those—Those glass boxes, But they used to have them At all the gas stations When I was a kid.
—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
HIS VIEW OF OUR ALLIES IN IRAQ
"Our allies are over there and we are here. Where would you rather be?"
HIS VIEWS ON WAR SECRECY
"By keeping in this silent mode we prove that our enemies won't know what we're doing any more than we do."
" I wasn't privee to that conversation, I was having sushi."
"Of course Mr. Ashcroft will try to avoid answering that, as I have. It is our right as Americans."
"I can assure you there's plenty of democracy going on behind closed doors."
"Secrecy unto itself is in itself relevant to the situation at hand at the time."
"My assessment of the current problem is for my ears only."
"That is classified beyond all recognition."
"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate ... necessarily accurate ... it might also not be inaccurate, but I mean ... I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."
THE LOCATION OF BIN LADEN
"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."
HIS COMMENTS ON HIS JOB
Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think,” What in the world am I doing here?” It’s a big surprise.
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
THE NEWS MEDIA
You're going to be told lots of things. You get told things every day that don't happen.
It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't— It's printed in the press. The world thinks all these things happen. They never happened. Everyone's so eager to get the story before in fact the story's there that the world is constantly being fed Things that haven't happened. All I can tell you is, it hasn't happened. It's going to happen.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
"The dumbest thing anyone could do would be to stand up here and start previewing things that somebody's thinking about or not thinking about or starting to disabuse you of each thing somebody tells you that we're thinking about, because then the first time we don't disabuse you, you'll say 'aha - that's what they're going to do!'
Donald Rumsfield has delivered his lines with a “dead pan” face of Jack Benny, the language skills of Archie Bunker, and the mind of confused old man. Its time for Play Dough with the grandkids Mr. Rumsfield. You’ve done your time.
# posted by Thomas @ 5:19 AM 
Monday, September 08, 2003
Bush's House of Cards
Bush's house of cards is collapsing all around him.
Bush's pick for federal judge, Miguel Estrada removed himself from consideration after he refused to cooperate with the Senate.
Bin Laden has not been captured
Saddam has not been captured.
The White House removed all negative references to global warming in their annual report.
The investigation of September 11 had 28 pages of censored information, which many people think is about the Saudi connection.
The battle over disclosing Cheney's energy policy meetings information and participants have confirmed that he has a lot to hide, like Enron's major role in deciding our nation's energy plan.
It was disclosed that after September 11, the White House instructed the EPA to modify their report regarding the air quality around the towers :they told the workers that the air was safe to breath.
The EPA recently said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and therefore it should not be regulated.
The UN headquarters in Bagdad was destroyed by a huge bomb and they are faulting Bush.
His buddy Tony Blair's publicly stated claims for going to war is being taken apart by a special prosecutor investigating the death of Dr David Kelly a british government expert on Iraq's WMD capability.
The California recall is not going his way.
Many many people are still pissed off at him because of the blackout ; his plan of deregulation of the power industry was an apparent cause of the transmission line problems.
The Texas Democrats have been given a lot of support for evading Tom Delay's redistricting plan.
Ashcroft's Patriot act has been despised by so many, that he was forced to tour the country to explain how vital it is to our homeland security. He can't get into specifics because of national security, but he asks us to trust him.
The internal conflict between Rumsfield and Powell is getting more and more pronounced.
Colin Powell will not serve with Bush if Bush wins a second term.
His road map for peace in the Mid East has fallen apart. Israel has undermined the effort from day one, and there is not a damn thing Bush can do about it.
The economy is getting better on paper but unemployment is staying very high.
Democrats are attacking his policies on a daily basis and none of them are being called traitors .
American soldiers are being killed or wounded at a constant rate.
And now, he has been forced to humble himself and go to the UN and ask for their participation in the Iraq war, because we do not have enough money or people to finish the job. He has to depend on France, Germany Russia and the others he has called "irrelevant" to come to his aid.
Yea, life is tough for our dear president ....and it is about time.
Bush's pick for federal judge, Miguel Estrada removed himself from consideration after he refused to cooperate with the Senate.
Bin Laden has not been captured
Saddam has not been captured.
The White House removed all negative references to global warming in their annual report.
The investigation of September 11 had 28 pages of censored information, which many people think is about the Saudi connection.
The battle over disclosing Cheney's energy policy meetings information and participants have confirmed that he has a lot to hide, like Enron's major role in deciding our nation's energy plan.
It was disclosed that after September 11, the White House instructed the EPA to modify their report regarding the air quality around the towers :they told the workers that the air was safe to breath.
The EPA recently said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and therefore it should not be regulated.
The UN headquarters in Bagdad was destroyed by a huge bomb and they are faulting Bush.
His buddy Tony Blair's publicly stated claims for going to war is being taken apart by a special prosecutor investigating the death of Dr David Kelly a british government expert on Iraq's WMD capability.
The California recall is not going his way.
Many many people are still pissed off at him because of the blackout ; his plan of deregulation of the power industry was an apparent cause of the transmission line problems.
The Texas Democrats have been given a lot of support for evading Tom Delay's redistricting plan.
Ashcroft's Patriot act has been despised by so many, that he was forced to tour the country to explain how vital it is to our homeland security. He can't get into specifics because of national security, but he asks us to trust him.
The internal conflict between Rumsfield and Powell is getting more and more pronounced.
Colin Powell will not serve with Bush if Bush wins a second term.
His road map for peace in the Mid East has fallen apart. Israel has undermined the effort from day one, and there is not a damn thing Bush can do about it.
The economy is getting better on paper but unemployment is staying very high.
Democrats are attacking his policies on a daily basis and none of them are being called traitors .
American soldiers are being killed or wounded at a constant rate.
And now, he has been forced to humble himself and go to the UN and ask for their participation in the Iraq war, because we do not have enough money or people to finish the job. He has to depend on France, Germany Russia and the others he has called "irrelevant" to come to his aid.
Yea, life is tough for our dear president ....and it is about time.
# posted by Thomas @ 11:49 PM
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Do We Care Yet?
According to a Gallup poll, 63% of americans still think Iraq was worth going to war over, but what was the threshold number for the number of injuries, we needed to suffer, before the average american starts to question our participation in the Iraq war? If it was 1000 wounded soldiers, we have passed that threshold. As of Sept 2, 2003, 1,124 soldiers have been wounded in action, and 284 died; statistically, the average american should now start caring more, right?
The U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries, only when one or more troops are killed, so the result is that many injuries go unreported. Central Command does keep a running total of the wounded, they just don't mention it very often. Probably because these figures are politically sensitive. By the way, it was Iraqi deaths they said they would not track. So don't get confused. We count our dead not their dead, we count our wounded, but we just don't mention it.
In World War II, 30.3 percent of soldiers died from their combat wounds. That percentage fell during the Korean War to 24.1 percent, and held steady through the Vietnam War (23.6 percent) and the Persian Gulf War (23.9 percent). But the number has declined sharply in Iraq, with 13.8 percent of battlefield wounds being fatal.
Giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began. More than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. These "impaired" soldiers are not counted as "wounded", even though many of them are just as disabled as the "officially declared wounded soldiers".
The 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, is based at Andrews. They were called up for a year in April to run what is essentially a medical air terminal, the nation's hub, for war wounded from Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the hospital's commanding general, said there were only two days in July and four in August that the hospital did not admit soldiers injured in Iraq.
"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," he said, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.
Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg." The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated, either in Iraq or at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where virtually all battlefield casualties are treated and stabilized.
High-tech body ceramic body armor, advanced radiological equipment, mobil Forward Surgical Teams, antibiotic beads that secrete highly concentrated medicine into wounds and genetically engineered bone morphogenetic proteins, which help heal bones without the need for bone grafts are keeping more seriously wounded soldiers alive than ever before. The work of highly educated, dedicated doctors, medics and nurses have made a significant difference to our wounded soldier's lives. Unfortunately, they are getting a lot of hands on experience piecing body parts together.
The survival rate can disguise the day-to-day danger level that coalition forces face in Iraq. Since most attention focuses on deaths, the higher numbers of wounded in Iraq have drawn relatively little attention The U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are now increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks, with almost 10 to 12 american troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action." Sooner or later someone is going to notice.
As of September 2, 2003, there are 1,124 wounded soldiers and 149 soldiers have died.
Does the number of wounded and dead american soldiers cause the average american to now care, or will they care when they can get past the want ad section of the paper?
Sources Cited:
Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01
Robert Schlesinger
Boston Globe
Mercury News
The U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries, only when one or more troops are killed, so the result is that many injuries go unreported. Central Command does keep a running total of the wounded, they just don't mention it very often. Probably because these figures are politically sensitive. By the way, it was Iraqi deaths they said they would not track. So don't get confused. We count our dead not their dead, we count our wounded, but we just don't mention it.
In World War II, 30.3 percent of soldiers died from their combat wounds. That percentage fell during the Korean War to 24.1 percent, and held steady through the Vietnam War (23.6 percent) and the Persian Gulf War (23.9 percent). But the number has declined sharply in Iraq, with 13.8 percent of battlefield wounds being fatal.
Giant C-17 transport jets arrive virtually every night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, on medical evacuation missions. Since the war began. More than 6,000 service members have been flown back to the United States. The number includes the 1,124 wounded in action, and thousands who became physically or mentally ill. These "impaired" soldiers are not counted as "wounded", even though many of them are just as disabled as the "officially declared wounded soldiers".
The 459th Aeromedical Staging Squadron, is based at Andrews. They were called up for a year in April to run what is essentially a medical air terminal, the nation's hub, for war wounded from Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the hospital's commanding general, said there were only two days in July and four in August that the hospital did not admit soldiers injured in Iraq.
"The orthopedic surgeons are very busy, and the nursing services are very busy, both in the intensive care units and on the wards," he said, explaining that there have been five or six instances in recent months when all of the hospital's 40 intensive care beds have been filled -- mostly with battlefield wounded.
Kiley said rocket-propelled grenades and mines can wound multiple troops at a time and cause "the kind of amputating damage that you don't necessarily see with a bullet wound to the arm or leg." The result has been large numbers of troops coming back to Walter Reed and National Naval Medical with serious blast wounds and arms and legs that have been amputated, either in Iraq or at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where virtually all battlefield casualties are treated and stabilized.
High-tech body ceramic body armor, advanced radiological equipment, mobil Forward Surgical Teams, antibiotic beads that secrete highly concentrated medicine into wounds and genetically engineered bone morphogenetic proteins, which help heal bones without the need for bone grafts are keeping more seriously wounded soldiers alive than ever before. The work of highly educated, dedicated doctors, medics and nurses have made a significant difference to our wounded soldier's lives. Unfortunately, they are getting a lot of hands on experience piecing body parts together.
The survival rate can disguise the day-to-day danger level that coalition forces face in Iraq. Since most attention focuses on deaths, the higher numbers of wounded in Iraq have drawn relatively little attention The U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are now increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks, with almost 10 to 12 american troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action." Sooner or later someone is going to notice.
As of September 2, 2003, there are 1,124 wounded soldiers and 149 soldiers have died.
Does the number of wounded and dead american soldiers cause the average american to now care, or will they care when they can get past the want ad section of the paper?
Sources Cited:
Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01
Robert Schlesinger
Boston Globe
Mercury News
# posted by Thomas @ 4:11 AM
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Politics as usual
Did you ever wonder who you can believe? The answer is not a politician that's for sure.
If I ran for office my campaign platform would read something like this: Vote for me, I will only take money from 5 interest groups and I will only steal 10% of the money I handle. This may be enough to get me elected to any position in government.
The temptation is so great when one is in government service. The money is everywhere.
I know a cop, and he has told me that the temptation to fool around on his wife is everywhere. sometimes it is just a speeding ticket away. It must be the same for politicians.
so I started to think, is democracy the best form of government? Do we have the best form of democracy? I don't know. More and more politics seems to be a game for the rich. When was the last time someone who was not a millionaire ran for congress? So is it a government by the people for the people if only the rich can participate?
If I ran for office my campaign platform would read something like this: Vote for me, I will only take money from 5 interest groups and I will only steal 10% of the money I handle. This may be enough to get me elected to any position in government.
The temptation is so great when one is in government service. The money is everywhere.
I know a cop, and he has told me that the temptation to fool around on his wife is everywhere. sometimes it is just a speeding ticket away. It must be the same for politicians.
so I started to think, is democracy the best form of government? Do we have the best form of democracy? I don't know. More and more politics seems to be a game for the rich. When was the last time someone who was not a millionaire ran for congress? So is it a government by the people for the people if only the rich can participate?
# posted by Thomas @ 1:05 AM
