Bye Bye Donald!

[ChristianLoeschel]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, intends to resign after six stormy years at the Pentagon, Republican officials said Wednesday.

Officials said Robert Gates, former head of the CIA, would replace Rumsfeld.

The development occurred one day after congressional elections that cost Republicans control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well. Surveys of voters at polling places said opposition to the war was a significant contributor to the Democratic Party's victory.

President George W. Bush was expected to announce Rumsfeld's departure and Gates' nomination at a news conference. Administration officials notified congressional officials in advance.

[Betsy]

A couple of interesting comments from an article I just read about this:


In brief remarks, Rumsfeld described the Iraq conflict as a "little understood, unfamiliar war" that is "complex for people to comprehend."

BETSY: [unfamiliar? and yeah, it may be a little complex for the folks at nwap, but judging from the election results, I think the majority of Americans have figured it out!]


Asked whether Rumsfeld's departure signaled a new direction in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops and cost more than $300 billion, Bush said, "Well, there's certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon."

BETSY: [is that really an answer to the question? um, no, not really.]

[JD Allen]

Democratic sweep in AR (minus the Boozer). Democratic control of the House and Senate. And now Rumsfeld gets fired. It's been a good 24 hours

[WindFem3]

It is truly a wonderful day!

I swear this feels like a holiday. Okay, so not a "Holy" day - quite the opposite - but you all know what I mean. In fact, James and I are sharing a bottle of Asti right now in celebration of the Democratic sweep and the fact that this is the 1-year anniversary of my gastric bypass (i.e., a healthy new life.)

Now let's just hope the incoming and remaining Dems keep their noses clean for the next two years - and that they clean up the cesspool that is Iraq. If they do, then I believe we can be relatively assured that the next President will be a Democrat.

As an added bonus, George's piss-poor Presidential performance has most likely ended Mother Barbara's Kennedyesque dreams of a Bush family political dynasty. Despite their collective faults, the Kennedys have given the world some great gifts, such as the Peace Corps and being at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. What good - EXACTLY - have the Bushes done? I posit that virtually none has come from George 1, little George, or Jeb. And although I happily admit it's a cheap shot, First Lady Laura has contributed nothing more than a freakily frozen Botoxed face, while she and George's twins contributed only low-rent trashiness with their public carousing - until they were yanked out of the public eye a few years ago, that is!

The Bushes quite literally make me sick, and I cannot wait to see their overprivileged rears backing out of the White House in shame.

As for Rummy? GOOD RIDDANCE!

[LaWood]

Rummy and Darth Cheney have been working as a TEAM since the Gerald Ford administration, circa 1974-77. They are good at creating and manipulating powerful alliances within existing structures of any organization. Under Ford and now Bush 43, they were/are skilled puppetmasters.

"In 1975, Ford also selected former congressman and ambassador Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld had previously served as Ford's transition chairman and later Chief of Staff. Additionally, Ford chose a young Wyoming politician, Richard Cheney, to be his new Chief of Staff and later campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.[28] Ford's dramatic reorganization of his Cabinet in the fall of 1975 has been referred to by political commentators as The "Halloween Massacre." Wikipedia

Rummy's departure signals that Darth Cheney, currently running at 80% disapproval rating, cannot be far behind.

Apocalyptically:
>While campaigning for Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in the Philadelphia suburbs today, former President George H.W. Bush warned of a "ghastly" future for his son and other Americans if "wild Democrats" take over Congress.
""I would hate to think what Arlen's life would be like, what Rick's life would be like, and what my son's life would be like if we lose control of the Congress," said former President George Bush in a reference to Pennsylvania's two Republican Senators. "If we have some of these wild Democrats in charge of these committees, it will be a ghastly thing for our country."

"They'd be pushing through all kinds of crazy legislation," he added, "And they would be issuing the subpoenas, dragging people in just to be getting headlines."
ABC News 10/5/06<

[Betsy]

I never actually READ Lucas Roebuck's editorials in the paper, but his topic today was something to the effect of "let's see what the democrats can do now" - the repubs can't just admit defeat, now they're going to wallow around in their negative cesspool of accusing the democrats of not being able to DO anything.

as if anything the demos could do or not do would be any worse than what the republicans have done to our country in the past few short years. geez. For George Sr. to say things are going to be "ghastly" now is a GIGANTIC JOKE, when the republican control for so long has been the very definition of ghastly. My gosh! How much in denial could somebody be??!!

they just make me laugh.

they'll be eating those words soon. (actually, they SHOULD eat those words, but if their tactic continues they'll just continue living in denial and whining a lot)

[Dardedar]

a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops and cost more than $300 billion...

DAR
This war is now projected to cost more than $2 trillion.

***
Iraq War Will Cost More Than $2 Trillion

By Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz
The Milken Institute Review

Friday 03 November 2006

Two scholars, one a Nobel Prize winner, revisit their estimate of the true cost of the Iraq war - and find that $2 trillion was too low. They consider not only the current and future budgetary costs, but the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East.

In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war - in both blood and money - has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number - the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East - now seems low.

One source of difficulty in getting an accurate picture of the direct cost of prosecuting the war is the way the government does its accounting. With "cash accounting," income and expenses are recorded when payments are actually made - for example, what you pay off on your credit card today - not the amount outstanding. By contrast, with "accrual accounting," income and expenses are recorded when the commitment is made. But, as Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, notes, "The budget of the United States uses cash accounting, and only the tiniest businesses in America are even allowed to use cash accounting. Why? Because it gives you a very distorted picture."

The distortion is particularly acute in the case of the Iraq war. The cash costs of feeding, housing, transporting and equipping U.S. troops, paying for reconstruction costs, repairs and replacement parts and training Iraqi forces are just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Costs incurred, but not yet paid, dwarf what is being spent now - even when future anticipated outlays are converted back into 2006 dollars.

...
There are 2.6 million veterans currently receiving disability pay, including a sobering 40 percent of the soldiers who served during the four-week-long Gulf War in 1991. Accrued liabilities for U.S. federal employees' and veterans' benefits now total $4.5 trillion. Indeed, our debt for veterans' health and disability payments has risen by $228 billion in the past year alone.

...
Note, too, that improvements in body armor mean that an unusually high number of soldiers are surviving major injuries, but ending up disabled. About 20 percent of survivors have suffered major head or spinal injuries, 18 percent incurred serious wounds and an additional 6 percent are amputees. The estimated 7,000 veterans with severe brain, spinal, amputation and other serious injuries will require a lifetime of round-the-clock care.

Government medical facilities are currently overwhelmed by the needs of soldiers injured in Iraq. Some 144,000 of them sought care from the VA in the first quarter of 2006 - 23 percent more than the Bush administration had estimated for the entire year! Similarly, the government projected that 18,000 returning soldiers would seek treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder in 2006 - but the VA treated 20,638 Iraqi war veterans for PTSD in the first quarter alone. All told, in the past year, the VA has added 250,000 new beneficiaries and still has a backlog of more than 400,000 pending claims.
...
Budgetary Cost of the War

Congress has already appropriated approximately $430 billion for military operations, reconstruction and related programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And these cash outlays have been rising as the war has progressed. In fiscal year 2003, the average monthly cost of operations was $4.4 billion, while today operations are running about $10 billion a month.

link

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I wish I could find the article I read that said the current and last year's "defense" budgets underfunded the VA by $3 Billion. That's one of the reasons none of the "support the troops" Republicans got higher than a C+ (Boozman got that) and the Rs' average was a D, while none of the "anti-war" Dems got less than a B- (Pryor got a B and Lincoln got a B+) and the Dem average was a B+ from the Afganistan and Iraq Veterans group when they graded Congress. What's really pitiful, as far as MSM and people getting the word out - the VFW endorsed & some 42% of vets voted for several D and D- R candidates "because they support the troops" - including Allen in the VA senate race over vet and former navy secretary Jim Webb. The Rs say "I support the troops" but vote against them - and the MSM reports the talk but not the walk.

[Betsy]

The scuttlebutt around the office today is that Rumsfeld's replacement is an even worse criminal than Rummy is, and who will march us straight into war with Iran.

[JD Allen]

The scuttlebutt around the office today is that Rumsfeld's replacement is an even worse criminal than Rummy is, and who will march us straight into war with Iran.

from what I've read Gates advocates one on one talks with Iran. That's a huge improvement over the old policy of punishing the "bad" countries by not talking to them. Seriously, is our government run by the equivalent of a bunch of stereotypical teenage girls?

[Hogeye]

Robert "Iran-Contra Scandal" Gates - an improvement? Perhaps a minor, cosmetic one. The real problem is a systemic one, and cannot be remedied by a mere change in personnel. So long as rulers can shift the costs of intervention onto their citizen-zombies, they will do so. Boobus Americanus is like a wino - always willing to have another drink of war, and only regretting it temporarily during the hangover. I don't see Americans being any less likely to fall for the next Kosevo or Iraq aggression scam. The only question is whether the next manufactured crisis will be in Iran, Sudan, or elsewhere. The Rep faction apparently prefers Iran, while the Dem faction of the War Party inclines toward Sudan (Darfur). Meanwhile, the US milfare goons still occupy part of Korea (50+ years) and Kosevo (Clinton's blowjob diversion occupation).

[Dardedar]

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Gates is a Daddy Bush crony from way back. He is more realistic than Rumsfield, but he is best known for "loyalty" and "shading" intelligence to report what his "superiors" wanted it to say. Since that's what got America to buy the Iraq invasion, I'm not hopeful. If he's brought up before the lame duck Senate, he's probably a shoo-in. If not until January, we may see some serious questioning. - maybe even enough to force a different choice (not that I think ANYBODY W selects will be helpful in getting us out of Iraq).

[Betsy]

Just read an article about how the Republicans are angry at Bush for waiting until the day after the election to oust Rumsfeld. If he had done it two weeks before the election, they say, it would have made a difference in the way the election went.

Actually, they might be right.

Bush's spokesman is saying that he didn't do it that way because it would have looked like a desperate political move instead of just doing what was right for the troops. Sounds like (cough) bullshit! (cough) to me. But it is interesting that he didn't do it the sneaky underhanded desperate way, since that's usually their M.O.

I had figured the ousting was a reaction to the way the election went.

[Dardedar]

If he had done it or announced it a week or two ago, and the election went the same, people would be arguing that this had caused the loss.

I think he didn't get enough heat for blatantly lying on Nov. 1 when he said he wanted Rumsfield to stay until the end of his presidency, even though he was already arranging the replacement.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I think he and Rove truly thought they'd stolen this election, too - but getting rid of Rummy was a high card (not as good as an ace, but maybe a Jack) they held in reserve to move public opinion back their way just in case. Remember the Rs are always working one election ahead.