The Blue State

Pentagon to target American public through new PR department

Fully realizing by now that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for the rest of the Bush presidency, from a public relations standpoint the Pentagon is making the smart move of getting ready for the long haul.  They are creating a new public relations division inside the Pentagon to counter what they consider to be misleading anti-war rhetoric:

The initiative comes amid plummeting domestic support for the war in Iraq and just before crucial mid-term congressional elections in whichopposition Democrats are contesting Republican control of the Congress.

Eric Ruff, the Pentagon press secretary, insisted that the new publicaffairs program was not prompted by either the elections or pollsshowing that only about 37 percent believe the war is going well.

"What were looking at doing is, 'How can we get better, how can we getfaster, how can we transform public affairs?'," he told reporters.

"And we're looking at being quicker to respond to breaking news. Beingquicker to respond, frankly, to inaccurate statements," he said.

"And we're looking at this whole issue of new media -- podcasting, andIM-ing and all those kinds of things, where people are basicallyrunning circles inside us," he said.

Ruff disclosed the expanded operations after questions were raisedabout a wall being built in the Pentagon press operations center thatwill separate the new unit from Pentagon public affairs officials whodeal with the media.

Still no word on when this will be completed, nor what effect it will have on daily Pentagon Q&A sessions with reporters.

Woodward's Book: Many in war cabinet wanted Rumsfeld fired

Laura Bush, Andrew Card and Condoleezza Rice led the effort to convince the President to fire Rumsfeld back in 2005:

The book reports that then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. CardJr. twice suggested that Bush fire Rumsfeld and replace him with formersecretary of state James A. Baker III, first after the November 2004election and again around Thanksgiving 2005. Card had the support ofthen-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his successor, CondoleezzaRice, as well as national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and seniorWhite House adviser Michael J. Gerson, according to the book.

Evenfirst lady Laura Bush reportedly told Card that she agreed Rumsfeld hadbecome a liability for her husband, although she noted that thepresident did not agree. "I don't know why he's not upset with this,"she told Card, according to the book. But Vice President Cheney andsenior Bush adviser Karl Rove argued against dumping Rumsfeld, and Bushagreed.

The book details how Rumsfeld alienated key figuresthroughout the government and military: Rice complained that Rumsfeldwould not return her telephone calls, forcing Bush to personallyintervene. Rumsfeld rebuffed Card when he conveyed Bush's order to sendNational Guard troops to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina untilhearing from the president himself. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the seniorU.S. commander in the Middle East, concluded that "Rumsfeld doesn'thave any credibility anymore."

My guess is that Dick Cheney wouldn't let it happen.  He and Rumsfeld are too close, and represent the most influential wing of the Bush war cabinet.  With Rumsfeld gone, Cheney knows Rice and Hadley would assume more control -- and as a result the Vice President would see his power diminish.

Three former generals demand Rumsfeld's resignation

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld twice tried to resign, only to be rebuked by President Bush.  We learned this during an exclusive interview with Rumsfeld on Larry King Live.

Today, three retired generals are begging for President Bush to follow through and let go of the Defense Secretary.  If Bush can't, then the three retired generals want Rumsfeld to resign on his own:

In testimony before the Democratic Policy Committee today, retiredMaj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division inIraq in 2004 and 2005 and served as a senior military assistant toformer deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, charged that Rumsfeldand others in the Bush administration "did not tell the American peoplethe truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq."

Hetold the committee, "If we had seriously laid out and considered thefull range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely havetaken a different course of action that would have maintained a clearfocus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamicfundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies thanthere were insurgents."

Joining his call for Rumsfeld to resignwere retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who was responsible fortraining Iraq's military and police in 2003 and 2004, and retiredMarine Col. Thomas X. Hammes, who served in Iraq in 2004 and helpedestablish bases for the reconstituted Iraqi armed forces.

Strategically speaking, there is no way on earth that President Bush would let Rumsfeld resign in the middle of a close election campaign.  It would only vindicate the idea furthered by progressive Democrats that Iraq was a mistake from the beginning, and the Administration has a poorly-planned defense strategy.  So look for Rumsfeld to stay on at least until after the election.

Just a thought: if Lieberman loses up in Connecticut this November, could he be the likely candidate to replace Rumsfeld?

Daily Press: Rumsfeld opposed post-war Iraq strategy

Another former General is coming out and exposing Rumsfeld.  According to General Mark Scheid, who will retire from the military in three weeks, Rumsfeld threatened to fire any military strategist that wanted to develop a postwar plan for Iraq.  Read this from the Daily Press:

Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans forsecuring a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the ArmyTransportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen.Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talkedabout the need for a post-war plan.

Rumsfeld did replace Gen.Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki toldCongress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to securepost-war Iraq.

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustisin Newport News, made his comments in an interview with the DailyPress. He retires in about three weeks.

Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's listened as other retired generals have done so.

"Everybody has a right to their opinion," he said. "But what good did it do?"

The rest of the article goes into specifics.  You can read the rest here.

Rumsfeld at this point is so in over his head that there is really no more breathing room.  Let's just pretend for one second that Rumsfeld had been a fine Defense Secretary up to this point.  Even if that were the case, the above information should be enough for him to be fired.  How could you not develop a postwar plan for a country with three ethnic groups that hate one another.  It would be convenient right now if there were such word in the English language that meant "beyond incompetent."
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Other sites blogging about Donald Rumsfeld: The Post Chronicle, Andrew Sullivan, Media Matters, Reclusive Leftist, Ohio's First, Aftermath News, Newvine, Shout Wire, True Blue Liberal, The Commons, Raw Story, The Carpetbagger Report, Liberal Values.

Rummy-Saddam handshake becoming famous on the net

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Iraq war critics to Hitler appeasers, he probably had no idea that his rhetoric would come back to haunt him.  First, Rumsfeld barely survived a Senate 'no confidence vote' from Democrats this week -- part of a grassroots-driven progressive offensive to use the Defense Secretary as the poster boy for the Administration's flawed policy in Iraq.

But Rumsfeld has also been getting another kind of publicity within the last week.  This publicity is much more mainstream, and will have a lasting impact on his legacy for future generations.  According to the Wall Street Journal blog, Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous 1983 handshake with Saddam Hussein has out-paced Nixon's meeting with Elvis as the number one most downloaded file at the George Washington University archives:

With Defense Secretary Rumsfeld making “appeasement” the big buzzwordof the month, the George Washington University’s National SecurityArchive notes that its single most-downloaded file is now the once-classified batch of documents, photos and videodocumenting Rumsfeld’s handshake and meeting with Saddam Hussein inDecember 1983. President Reagan had sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad to helprestore diplomatic ties with Iraq and aid Baghdad in its fight againstIran.

“Rumsfeld meeting Saddam has now far outpaced the previous winner,which was Elvis meeting Nixon,” says Thomas Blanton, director of thearchive, which collects and posts significant declassified documentsunder the Freedom of Information Act. Rumsfeld last week warned of a rise of Islamic fascism and saidthat people should not fall into the trap of appeasement as did thosewho tried to accommodate the Nazis in the 1930s. The remarks led manypundits to compare Rumsfeld’s 1983 meeting with Hussein to BritishPrime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1938.

George Washington University is not the only place where we have seen a spike in the number of people watching that clip.  The video has also surfaced over at the web site You Tube.  One such version of the handshake clip has brought in almost 7,000 viewers, others almost just as many.  So many Americans are becoming more aware of Rumsfeld's own appeasement of Saddam.
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Other sites blogging about Donald Rumsfeld: Dem Bloggers, The Daily Whim, Liberal Values, Dying to Preserve the Lies, Progressive Society Blog, The Carpetbagger Report, Crooks and Liars, The Insomnia Report, Democratic Underground, Left Independent, Wot is it Good 4, Democratic Veteran, Radio Left, Disgusted in St. Louis, Drudge Retort.

Did Rove set Rumsfeld up?

The minority of Republicans who disapproved of Donald Rumsfeld but were afraid to call for his resignation now have an excuse to do so.  The Defense Secretary's outburst at war critics this week during his speech at the American Legion, where he compared such critics to World War II era Nazi appeasers, now gives the small number of Republicans, many of which face tough election races this November, the necessary political wiggle room to appeal to moderate voters who are uneasy about the situation in Iraq.

Take U.S. Senate candidate challenger Thomas H. Kean Jr (R-New Jersey) for example:

In an interview at his campaign headquarters here, just shy of midnighton Friday, Mr. Kean said that he had become dissatisfied over thesummer with what he said was Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to consider“competing points of view.”

But what compelled him to advocate publicly for a “fresh face”leading the troops, Mr. Kean said, were Mr. Rumsfeld’s recent remarkschiding critics of the war for “moral and intellectual confusion,” andcomparing them to those who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany in the1930’s.

“By engaging in that kind of rhetoric, this secretary has stepped over the line,” Mr. Kean said.

I don't like conspiracy theories because they often do more to offer unorganized speculation than connect any dots.  But in this case, especially with the elections around the corner, anything is possible.  If you were Karl Rove and you had to find a way to help Republicans retain control of the Senate, while keeping in mind that it will probably come down to a few close races in the North East, how would you appeal to undecided voters?  What other way is there besides having as many Republican candidates as possible distance themselves from the Administration and portray themselves as traditional tax cutting, moral values conservatives?  If Karl Rove had any say in the Administration's rhetorical counteroffensive last week, there was a good chance he knew exactly what he was doing.

Why would Republicans want their own to trash Rumsfeld?  It's quite simple.  Let's use New Jersey once again as our example.  Now that both the Republican and Democratic candidates agree on Rumsfeld's ouster, the Democrat will not be effective if he uses that as his main issue.  The traditional media usually pays closer attention to the contrasts between candidates, not what the candidates agree on.  With Rumsfeld off the table, that minimizes a huge issue and allows the debate to center more around local matters.  If you need to remember one thing heading into November, it's this: national issues in Senate and House races help the Democrats.  So what Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, Frank Luntz and the rest of the GOP strategists intend to do is localize as many of those elections as possible, limiting the impact that national concerns like the Iraq war will have on voters.

Will it work?  The chances are that it won't.  As the cliche goes, anything can happen between now and November.  The chances are that the Republicans will lose the House and maybe the Senate unless one of two things happen: either the races become more about local issues, or some major event takes place right before the election (such as attacking Iran).

The point is that Karl Rove always closes well.  He knew what he was doing last week.  Either he wanted Rumsfeld out, or he intended to give northern Republican candidates some help in making their election contests more about local issues.
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Other sites blogging about this issue: Make it Stop!, Huffington Post, Hotline, Coalition for a Republican-Free America, Doobert's Digs, Grouchy's Liberaltopia, Beachblogger, The Carpetbagger Report, TPM Cafe, Musing Minds, The Gun Toting Liberal, Beaker Street Blog.

A report that Rumsfeld will not cite

While the Defense Secretary was defending his Iraq policy this week, his own Pentagon released a report that cited a recent spike in violence in Iraq:

Executions, kidnappings and other sectarian attacks targeting Iraqicivilians have soared over the past three months, contributing to a 51percent rise in casualties among the population and Iraqi securityforces, the report said. More than 3,000 Iraqis are killed or woundedeach month, and by July, 2,000 of the casualties were the result ofsectarian incidents, it showed.

The Pentagon report, though consistent with what news media havereported for months, is significant because it represents an officialacknowledgment of trends that are widely believed to be driving thecountry toward full-scale civil war.

I can't wait until next week when Rumsfeld tries to spin his way out of this one.

In a corner, Rumsfeld knows he made a mistake

Parents often tell their kids that when someone is acting annoying, you simply ignore that person.  In politics, as we have learned over the last five years, it's a whole different ballgame.  If you sit around and remain mute while you and everyone else with like-minded views gets labeled as unamerican, unpatriotic or an appeaser, it sends the message to your political opposition that this twisted rhetoric can continue without consequences.  In 2003, we sat around a lot while being labeled as weak on national defense.  Sadly, our response was to turn the other way like a bunch of sissies and reluctantly vote with the other side.  Hundreds of billions of dollars and more than 2,600 lives later, we are in a war that is an utter embarrassment to our historic reputation as a world leader.  Our side failed to speak up.  A few years later after realizing what hesitation and humiliation can do, slowly but surely, the Democratic lawmakers are beginning to grow a spine and respond immediately this time when attacked.

So this week when Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the war to Nazi appeasers, he probably didn't expect such a major response from Democratic lawmakers and the netroots.  He is not used to anyone telling him that he crossed the line.  Because we stood our ground and pushed back, and because the call for his resignation is growing as a result, the Defense Secretary is now taking a step back.  In fact, he is so on the defensive that yesterday he sent a letter to Democrats in Congress, explaining to them that the media took his remarks out of context:

In a letter to Congress's top Democrats, Rumsfeld said recent remarkshe made during a speech in Salt Lake City were misrepresented by themedia, including by the Associated Press. Rumsfeld said he was"concerned" by the reaction of Democrats, many of whom called for hisresignation and said he was treading on dangerous territory.

"I know you agree that with America under attack and U.S. troops in thefield, our national debate on this should be constructive," Rumsfeldwrote Friday.

Other than the fact that he was called on it, why else would Rumsfeld even care what Democrats thought?  This guy is in hot water, and he knows it.  Karl Rove probably has knots in his stomach right now, realizing that between now and the election Donald Rumsfeld can legitimately be made into a campaign issue.

Think about what this does for the Democratic Party's hopes of nationalizing the November vote.  Usually the midterm elections are decided by local issues.  Now the tables have turned.  Democrats can tell voters, "The Republican majority has shown the country that they are fundamentally incapable of holding Mr. Rumsfeld and the rest of the war cabinet accountable.  Unless we take back the House and Senate, giving the country the accountability and transparency it needs, we will have to listen to this guy for the next two years as he continues to mismanage our national security."

So thanks Mr. Rumsfeld for stating the perfect case this week why the Republican Party needs to be held accountable this November.
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Other sites blogging about Secretary Rumsfeld: Media Matters, The Carpetbagger Report, The Left Coaster, Daily Kos, The Art of Imperfection, Crooks and Liars, Get Real News, Liberty Street, The Existentialist Cowboy, Liberal and Loving It, ReBelle Nation.

Democrats gear up for a 'no confidence' vote

Even though the Democrats have been the targets of the Administration's foreign policy offensive all week long, this is also a great opportunity for them.  Last week, there were murmurings inside circles of the Democratic Party about calling for a no-confidence vote of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, anticipating that many moderate Republicans up for reelection would join the resolution. 

With the Defense Secretary's latest tirade this week where he compared war critics to Nazi appeasers, the Democrats may have their best opportunity to introduce the "no confidence vote" resolution.

According to the Washington Post, the Democrats are waiting to see whether their candidates currently involved in close elections would welcome such legislation:

Some Democratic House candidates, such as Diane Farrell inConnecticut's 4th District, have been encouraging Democratic leaders tomove formally for a vote of no confidence. And party leadership aidessaid they are canvassing Democratic members of Congress and exploringthe parliamentary mechanism to do so. Before the move is set, the aidessaid, they want to hear from Democrats in tough races who may feel thatthe move would leave them vulnerable to Republican attacks.

The Republicans like to talk a lot about the importance of sending the right message to our adversaries.  Well, if the Democrats back down on this "no confidence" legislation, they will have send a message to the Republicans that they are not tough enough and will be content putting up with two more years of Republican bullying on Capitol Hill.  Last week during an appearance on the Late Show with Dave Letterman, Nancy Pelosi claimed that House Democrats are more united than they have been in the last 25 years.  Now it's time to put that unity to the test.

Bush tries to top Rumsfeld's threatening rhetoric

Between August 31st and September 11th, the Administration will use the fifth anniversary of the worst attack ever on U.S. soil to appeal to the conservative base ahead of the November 7th midterm elections.  While all political analysts would agree that the President is trying to score some political points by giving these speeches, he ironically is asking the Democrats not to politicize the national security issue:

“These are important times, and I seriously hope people wouldn’tpoliticize these issues I’m going to talk about,” Mr. Bush said after afund-raiser at a house in Little Rock, Ark.

This follows a week-long push by Donald Rumsfeld to compare those who disapprove of President Bush's war policy with Nazis appeasers in World War II:

"I recount that history because, once again, we face similarchallenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type offascism," Rumsfeld said. "But some seem not to have learned history'slessons."

He continued: "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or some way, vicious extremists could be appeased?"

On a positive note, at least we will get to see whether Bush's rhetoric can top Rumsfeld as the lowest of the low.  According to one source, Bush's speech in front of the American Legion begins this morning at 11 AM -- not that I will be watching.  Only watch if you are okay with your blood boiling in the morning.

This speech should go much better for Bush than his disastrous interview with NBC's Brian Williams because he will be in a much more controlled environment.