Rumsfeld - Time Person of the Year 2003

[JohnT]

He clearly is the most intelligent cabinent official since Kissinger and the most innovative SecDef since MacNamara.

Ah, yes, Robert MacNamara, America's greatest failure. It was said of his tenure at Ford that there were no honest answers because there were no honest questions, a pattern that followed that SOB the rest of his life.

[Sava]

yup, Ned compares Rummy to the evil war criminal Kissinger and the inept McNamara... I wonder if ned is a closet liberal

[Nubclear]

This thread has fallen sooo far....

Down with America!

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by Azazel
Rumsfeld

Hey, I never actually read that article before. I always assumed they were praising Hitler, but its hardly flattering...

[JimmyCracksCorn]

...wrong thread

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
I find it hilarious how Ned thinks comparing Rummy to Kissinger and McNamara is some sort of ringing endorsement-

There's nothing wrong with being compared with Kissinger. He was fairly competent at his job. Anyway, what's wrong with McNamara?

[Mr. Harley]

McNamara, the idiot who put the accountants in charge of the military. The people who replaced the Dupont IMR powder with NATO standard (and cheaper) ball powder to save a few bucks. Resulting in jams in the middle of fire fights, resulting in grunts trying to field strip the damn thing at night in the middle of swamps, resulting in increased casualties (read DEATHS) of aforementioned grunts. Add in stupidities like the F4 without gun armament (because they KNEW missles would replace guns), the Sheridan, ad naseum. While McNamara's DOD did not produce all of the technical screw ups that killed US troops, their glacial reaction and intial denial response contributed substantially to the degree of these foobars.

So you have Rumsfeld, an ex-aviator (at least he served, unlike most of the Bush White House and the current Republican leadership) backing the light infranty division imbeciles in the army. These units have a terrible history, getting chewed up in almost every case they have been deployed in actual war zones. They do poorly against regular infranty, they do poorly against guerillas, they do extremely poorly against any kind of AFV - I repeat, the man is a fool. Though I will grant Ned's comparision to McNamara.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Ned
He clearly is the most intelligent cabinent official since Kissinger and the most innovative SecDef since MacNamara.

The most moral member of the admin since Nixon, the most charming since Gore, the most loyal since Burr....

[KrazyHorse]

Seriously, guys, whose DL is Ned?

Che, I'm looking at you...

[Ned]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
McNamara, the idiot who put the accountants in charge of the military. The people who replaced the Dupont IMR powder with NATO standard (and cheaper) ball powder to save a few bucks. Resulting in jams in the middle of fire fights, resulting in grunts trying to field strip the damn thing at night in the middle of swamps, resulting in increased casualties (read DEATHS) of aforementioned grunts. Add in stupidities like the F4 without gun armament (because they KNEW missles would replace guns), the Sheridan, ad naseum. While McNamara's DOD did not produce all of the technical screw ups that killed US troops, their glacial reaction and intial denial response contributed substantially to the degree of these foobars.

So you have Rumsfeld, an ex-aviator (at least he served, unlike most of the Bush White House and the current Republican leadership) backing the light infranty division imbeciles in the army. These units have a terrible history, getting chewed up in almost every case they have been deployed in actual war zones. They do poorly against regular infranty, they do poorly against guerillas, they do extremely poorly against any kind of AFV - I repeat, the man is a fool. Though I will grant Ned's comparision to McNamara.

I too am not sure about the Stryker. If this is a failure, Rumsfeld will share that characteristic with McNamara who had his share of screw-ups.

However, aside from equiment issues, Rumsfeld clearly is the man behind the very successful operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of the military were highly skeptical in invading Iraq with a total force of, what was it, 60,000 troops? That is about 1/10 the force we had during the Gulf War, but it worked spectacularly well.

[Mr. Harley]

Ned, the man gambled with our troopers lives unneccessarily, for political gain - as in, bring down Saddam a little faster (run Bradlies through a city while shaped charge rounds are extremely available just to hurry things along, and if one or two Bradlies get brewed up, well too bad), or don't make the full committment of troops to Afghanistan. Like Hitler (I am not making Nazi comparisons here, neither he nor the Bush adminstration is Nazi-like at all, I think more of 1890's GB) he has made a series of astute military gambles. There were unnecessary except to keep costs down. I do not accept the argument that it is acceptable to risk GI's lives to let the administration justify a bigger tax cut, or justify making more of it permanent. That's why I hate the new more lighter-faster doctrine. M1 Abrams keep American boys alive (and girls once they let them drive them in combat zones). Light AFV's are dangerous, and Humvee's are death traps, suitable only for transportation duties, not as a substitute for APC's or police vehicles (i.e. what the Stryker was really designed for). Deploying minimal forces and hoping that combined with airpower and irregular forces they can bring down the opposition is again a gamble with the soldier's lives, and an unneccessary one.

What I find most frightening about the man is his willingness to cook intelligence, ignore the experts if they disagree with his fair-haired boys (and they are almost all white, caucasian males), and then minimize the damage done by the stupid, pre-conceived analysis. The military experts predicted almost every problem we have had in occupied Iraq, while his tame analysis group minimized them. So what do they do? They hunt down the career experts who tried to publicize the screw-ups, under the new Homeland Security laws. McNamara's DOD (cooked intelligence - Vietnam, sound familiar) with a vengeance. The only thing we can hope is that the new administrators in place can undo all the ill will we've already created. Plus, Ho Chi Minh while no good guy was not the monster Saddam Hussein was (though somebody I suspect will argue that), so we have more cooperation from the domestic population - for now.

[Ned]

Shawn, to be generous, Rumsfeld wanted an additional division, the 4th ID, coming in from the North. But, Iraq is no Nazi Germany in terms of its willingness or ability to fight a defensive battle. Rumsfeld must have known that. What he did was right. We could not have done it any cleaner with more troops.

As I said, the Stryker does concern me. It also concerns me that the Humvee is not armored and for this reason should not be going on patrols or convoys alone. I remain convinced that armor is critical in this kind of warfare. (In retrospect, one of the major reasons our casualties in Vietnam were so high is that we fought that war almost entirely without armor.)

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sava
yup, Ned compares Rummy to the evil war criminal Kissinger and the inept McNamara... I wonder if ned is a closet liberal

Kissinger a war criminal? How so?

During his time as National Security Advisor, he was a negotiator. During his time as Secretary of State, the war was over.

[Ned]

JohnT, if McNamara was a complete screw-up, why was he considered to be among the "best and brightest" from the Kennedy-Johnson era?

The most controversial thing he ever did was to force us to create the F-111 that was neither a good fighter nor a good bomber; but which became a weapons platform that was preferred for "precision" conventional bombing missions in the '80s and early '90s.

If he had a failure, it was not convincing or perhaps even trying to convince Johnson that his Vietnam War strategy could never achieve Johnson's war aim of convincing the NV to negotiate for peace.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ned


Kissinger a war criminal? How so?

During his time as National Security Advisor, he was a negotiator. During his time as Secretary of State, the war was over.

I guess you missed Christopher Hitchins book on Kissinger. Documentary evidence shows Kissinger was active in undermining Chilean democracy (and no Ned, Allende was no communist stooge, and even if he had been, he had been democratically elected) by OK assasinations of Chilean officials. he also OK secret bombings into Cambodia, so forth and so on.

Wait a minute, why am I arguing with you? To argue well we must share some basic ideas in common, but your interpretation of the world simply baffles me to no end.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
There's nothing wrong with being compared with Kissinger. He was fairly competent at his job.

So was Eichmann: it is what he was competent at achieving that matters

Anyway, what's wrong with McNamara?

The man has issued so many mea culpas by now- in short, he continued policies in South East Asia which he in his heart believed to be failing (and on the gorund as well). What do you say of a man who continious down a ruinous path even as he knows he is doing it and does little to try to turn around? Ecen if you don't condemn, it is not something to follow.

[VJ]

About Kissinger:
US actions in Cambodia during early 1970's were the only reason why Pol Pot got into power in 1975. During the next three years, more than a million people (>20% of the population) got killed under his reign.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by GePap
So was Eichmann: it is what he was competent at achieving that matters

That was my point. I still fail to see how being compared to Kissinger is a bad thing.

[Q Classic]

foobars

isn't it fubar? and foobar, isn't that a media player?

that said, rumsfeld could learn how to stfu, and maybe let those with more tact/diplomacy tell the french and the germans that they suck, rather than blurting it out in an offensive manner.

[TCO]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
McNamara, the idiot who put the accountants in charge of the military. The people who replaced the Dupont IMR powder with NATO standard (and cheaper) ball powder to save a few bucks. Resulting in jams in the middle of fire fights, resulting in grunts trying to field strip the damn thing at night in the middle of swamps, resulting in increased casualties (read DEATHS) of aforementioned grunts. Add in stupidities like the F4 without gun armament (because they KNEW missles would replace guns), the Sheridan, ad naseum. While McNamara's DOD did not produce all of the technical screw ups that killed US troops, their glacial reaction and intial denial response contributed substantially to the degree of these foobars.

So you have Rumsfeld, an ex-aviator (at least he served, unlike most of the Bush White House and the current Republican leadership) backing the light infranty division imbeciles in the army. These units have a terrible history, getting chewed up in almost every case they have been deployed in actual war zones. They do poorly against regular infranty, they do poorly against guerillas, they do extremely poorly against any kind of AFV - I repeat, the man is a fool. Though I will grant Ned's comparision to McNamara.

Go Dupont@!!!

[Mr. Harley]

Ned, I suspect we are going to disagree on Rumsfeld on the conduct of the two current conflicts. I see what he did as an irresponsible gamble, you as astute risk taking. Unless he gets stuck trying to apply his doctrine somewhere like North Korea, we'll never know for sure. So I really hope we don't get to find out.

Only certain people consider McNamara as one of the "best and brightest." In military circles the McNamara DOD is often used as an excellent example of how not to win a war. Journalists and writers who have a weak grounding in history, or do not understand military matters, might consider him brilliant. I nor many other people who share the criteria I judge by do not. Note I am not agenda driven here. I detest DOD heads in both a conservative and a liberal administation. My criteria is based on the military realities, versus the agenda of the administation in charge.

You haven't dealt with the other issue I brought up. Cooking the books, reference intelligence. I suspect that is both why I really loathe the man, and compare him to McNamara. Believing your own propaganda has probably killed more grunts than anything short of bad generalship, with cost-cutting/shoddy equipment-logistics running close behind in third. The evidence is quite strong he own special intelligence group, whose name slips my mind, went in and not only ignored, but threatened the professional types in the military and civilian intelligence communities. Rumsfeld is a dangerous man, and the sooner he is out, the better as far as I am concerned.

[Drake Tungsten]

Rumsfeld

[Oncle Boris]

Forgive my ignorance, but who is/was McNamara? What did he do?

[Ted Striker]

McNamara was the guy who ran the Vietnam war