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This post is in: Open Threads, War
He worked for Richard Nixon but kept clear of Watergate. He and his protege, Dick Cheney, worked for Gerald Ford. Under Ford, Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense. George H. W. Bush felt no need of his services, but his son recalled Rumsfeld to Secretary of Defense, where he oversaw the disastrous Iraq War and encouraged the use of torture.
From Twitter:
A statement from the family of Donald Rumsfeld: pic.twitter.com/AlKYxVvqgF
— Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) June 30, 2021
Fascinating and exasperating to cover. He had a fixation with power largely for its own sake but also with precise language that he used to shut down questions he didn’t have answers to, a category that grew as his time in office lengthened. https://t.co/KubD6coNsC
— David Cloud (@DavidCloudLAT) June 30, 2021
few people did more to author the present, and put less thought into that authorship
— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) June 30, 2021
it's a failed attempt in that Rumsfeld, unlike McNamara, had absolutely no interest in self-reflection. he doesn't give Morris so much as a hint of introspection or regret.
— Quinta Jurecic (@qjurecic) June 30, 2021
«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.»
— Dr. Steven J. Gibbons (@stevenjgibbons) June 30, 2021
Open thread.
Comments are closed.
waspuppet
At least SOMETHING good happened today.
Now do Kissinger!
dmsilev
He needed to complete the quadrant with the unknown knowns (“things we didn’t know we know”).
Aziz, light!
Rumsfeld hasn’t gone to heaven, but somewhere north, south, east, and west of there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You should only say good things about the dead.
Donald Rumsfeld is dead.
…..
matt
Horrible human being. The world is better without him in residence.
Old School
Cheryl Rofer
Moar news. It’s one of those days.
Cheryl Rofer
terraformer
The only “known known” with this guy is that he was a piece of shit.
Fck him.
germy
bogart83
Woooooooooohoooooooo! That fucker is on my personal list of people who materially affected my life for the worse through his stupid fucking war and now I’m gonna get shitfaced.
Cheney and Bush are the other two, if you care.
Ryan
The Unknown Known is doubtless what the coroner could write as his cause of death.
Cacti
His family said that he’ll be remembered for “those whose lives were forever changed” by his public career.
Can’t disagree there. About a million lives were changed rather permanently due his term as SecDef.
My condolences to his victims and their families.
LeftCoastYankee
Now he’s off the great known unknown.
Another Scott
Ah, what might have been…
Cheers,
Scott.
Old School
@Cheryl Rofer: So the committee is bipartisan!
PsiFighter37
I wonder what all the vets from Iraq think of this, as well as the Iraqi families who lost loved ones while we were there.
I shed absolutely no tears over his passing.
Ryan
@Another Scott: Nixon was right! Rumsfeld doesn’t know crap about foreign policy.
Another Scott
@Old School: “And when you’re done with that, give me your thoughts on building a new Pentagon under Greenland…”
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
May he know shock and awe.
trollhattan
His preening arrogance was the cherry on top of the shit sundae he was for eight years serving/lying for W.
Roger Moore
It’s too bad Rumsfeld and his band of war criminals weren’t put on trial. Now it’s too late.
Brachiator
Rumsfeld has died.
OK
I guess it is interesting to note how some people keep getting cycled into positions of power.
Fuck them both. McNamara’s self-reflection came too late to do a damn thing for anyone.
trollhattan
Will Glem be writing six-thousand words on how liberals failed Donald Rumsfeld?
Betsy
I’d say “Rest In War, Asshole,” but I’m supposed to forgive as I hope to be forgiven. That is hard.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
Well, there’s a patch of grass the lawnkeeper will never have to water.
Joe Falco
He died never being brought to justice, and I fear his other neocon partners in crime during the Bush II administration will enjoy the same fate.
Scuffletuffle
coin operated
For me, Iraq 2 was the first period in my life where I had to tell people “I didn’t quit talking to you over a difference in politics…I quit talking to you over a difference in morals”
Where does the line form to piss on Rumsfeld’s grave?
Another Scott
@germy:
They’ve shown, again, how much they value their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. The committee needs to get going and not worry about their feelings…
Cheers,
Scott.
Renie
@waspuppet: When my son told me Rumsfield died first thing I said was ‘can’t believe Kissinger is still alive’. LOL
raven
Fuck him
Cheryl Rofer
So I guess we know two of the Republicans Pelosi will choose for the select committee – Cheney and Kinzinger.
Cacti
The run up to Iraq 2 was the first time in my adult life where I wondered if the rest of the country had lost its mind.
The bloodlust was palpable. Critical thought was turned off and shouted down as a terrorist plot.
In retrospect, the cult-like devotion to Bush at the time was foreshadowing what was to come with Trump.
trollhattan
@Betsy:
If he “rests in war” then it has to be Rummy in the trench clutching a rifle, not folks Rummy sends. Could be instructive.
Wag
Rumsfeld conveniently forgot the the “known unknowns” aka the lies that he knowingly told to get us into the war in Iraq
Roger Moore
@coin operated:
I’m not sure there’s a meaningful difference. A huge part of our political differences are fundamentally about difference in morals. Provided we agree on the way the world is, our political differences are mostly a matter of how we think the world ought to be, i.e. our moral viewpoint. I think this is a big reason so many conservatives have retreated into a world of alternative facts. Their political views are so out of touch with their stated moral views that the only way to square them is to refuse to accept the world as it is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer: Speaking for myself: I’d take Kinzinger if I have to, and from all the reporting, there will be at least one R on Pelosi’s list. I hope she doesn’t pick Cheney, who may have belatedly spoken up on trump, but she’s been going Big Lie Lite on “election integrity”.
OTOH, her name gives her more weight up there, so… fuck if I know
Nutmeg again
Glad to hear it. When will Darth Cheney kick the bucket?
NotMax
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
“Before we close this hole up, anyone managed to find any good to toss in? Anyone? Bueller?”
//
@Cheryl Rofer
Expecting the Rs to vote in favor of any investigation into January 6th is not unlike expecting the Reich High Command to have voted yes for holding the Nuremberg trials.
rikyrah
Rummy, yet the Evil One still walks the Earth.
VOR
Every obituary should include that picture of him shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand.
Another Scott
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
Yup. The case for war never rang true, no matter how much I tried twisting that pretzel. Then, the idea that they could simply go in, break apart Saddam’s regime and the Iraquis would dust themselves, go out and start a democracy was a fanciful lie (along with “this war will pay for itself”).
When they “liberated” then failed to guard those massive armories I knew the gig would be up. Oh, nobody is going to come in and clear out all those weapons and explosives, no way. Right?
Bastards.
Suzanne
Tots. Pears. GLEE!!!
JPL
@waspuppet: Walking dead.
Geminid
New York Times military correspondent Michael Gordon and retired Marine General Bernard Trainor wrote a very good book about the planning and execution of the Iraq invasion, titled Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (2006). The authors had a lot to say about Donald Rumsfeld’s character and methods, and none of it was good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott:
Is this a joke I don’t get? or is Liza Minnelli on some kind of death watch ?
dnfree
Rumsfeld could have been in these lyrics with McNamara. Plenty of people were Rumsfelded and Cheneyed.
I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored
I been John O’Hara’d, McNamara’d
I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled ’til I’m blind
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, ’cause I’m left-handed
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind
I been Phil Spectored, resurrected
I been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce
And all my wealth won’t buy me health
So I smoke a pint of tea a day
I knew a man, his brain was so small
He couldn’t think of nothing at all
Not the same as you and me
He doesn’t dig poetry
He’s so unhip that when you say Dylan
He thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas
Whoever he was
The man ain’t got no culture
But it’s alright, ma, everybody must get stoned
I been Mick Jaggered and silver daggered
Andy Warhol, won’t you please come home?
I been mother, father, aunt and uncled
Been Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled
I just discovered somebody’s tapped my phone
I’ve lost my harmonica, Albert
Baud
@Cacti:
The one excuse we have is that it came on the heels of 9/11, which was a true tragedy than can affect a nation’s senses.
There is no such excuse when it came to Trump.
Benw
Grim Reaper: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So a dumber version of McNamara, now there is a way to go down in history Rummy.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Shouldn’t it be about how liberals all love Donald Rumsfeld? I can’t keep track any more.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Cacti: I knew it was a cult after the 2004 election. If you had gone to anyone on, say, October 1, 2001 and told them Bush would run again in 2004 without having caught Osama bin Laden, they would have laughed. Then they would have said there’s no way, because Bush would have been drawn and quartered by then.
A year later he had people perfectly happy to invade the wrong country, just because he said so, and never mind that he was obviously lying.
(In fairness, I was raised by authoritarians in a neighborhood full of immature macho idiots, so I’m hypersensitive to dear-leader tough-guy bullshit.)
Mike in NC
Another terrible person has been taken from us.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The stock price of KAOS plummeted on news of Rumsfeld’s relocation.
Soprano2
It’s hard to explain what it was like if you weren’t politically aware at that time. If you even asked questions, you were a terrorist-loving America hater, why on Earth don’t you want to attack the people who attacked us on 9-11, what’s wrong with you? The difference, though, is that Republicans did eventually become disenchanted with W, whereas their love of/fear of Trump has only grown.
Tony Jay
Having spent a fair chink of the 2000s instructing that glassy-eyed murder-gnome to fuck off whenever his self-satisfied scowl of a face loomed across a TV screen… better late than never, shitbag.
More, please.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My understanding is that Pelosi has the final say on all the committee members. 5 of the 13 are supposed to be Republicans, so that number had damn well better include the two who actually voted for it.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The name of the Twitter account may be a clue. Otherwise, I dunno.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/twitters-most-heartfelt-liza-minnelli-tribute
HTH!!
Cheers,
Scott.
MJS
@Baud: The invasion of Iraq occurred a year and a half after 9/11. The WW2 equivalent would be declaring war on Japan in June, 1943.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: Apparently Rumm thought the looting of the armories was awesome because it showed the Iraqs were free! I doesn’t surprise me that asshole went to his grave still convinced that everything went perfect in Iraq.
Soprano2
You forgot the part where the new government was going to love the U.S. and recognize Israel, which was going to cause all the other governments in the Middle East to do the same thing. They believed so many insane things, it was unreal. My husband said the same thing about those weapons caches, he couldn’t believe they were leaving that stuff behind. He said they should have either confiscated it or blown it all up. Since they did neither, they got to “find” it in other ways…..
chopper
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]:
need some very urine-resistant grass cultivar tho
Baud
@MJS:
I wasn’t justifying it. But there at least was an external precipitating event that set off the madness.
Roger Moore
@MJS:
That’s totally unfair. Japan was responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack. It would be like invading China in June, 1943.
Soprano2
@Baud: That’s true – people thought the U.S. was invulnerable, and when they found out we weren’t some of them lost their minds with fear and rage. There still wasn’t as much support for invading Iraq as people liked to pretend there was, though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and all the deans and trustees and regents and assorted grandees of Howard University just ordered all the alcohol and tossed their phones out the window….
MJS
Immanentize
Dead Rummy, June 2003, nearly twenty years ago:
Geminid
@Roger Moore: I think Republican House Impeachers Katko (NY) and Upton (MI) would play it straight if they were named to the Select Commitee. They voted against it, but they still might serve. The Minority Leader would probably rather that no Republicans serve, but I can see Katko and Upton telling McCarthy to pound sand on this one.
Ruckus
@Baud:
9/11 should not be an excuse because they never went after the leaders of the plot in the first place, and the war was never about 9/11. That was the excuse, nothing more. I think they thought that war is always good, rumsfield and his ilk were and are war mongers. Their concept of government is power, unlimited power, for them and no one else. It’s why they pal around with vlad. They appreciate his style and bravado.
A Ghost to Most
So many graves to shit on.
Almost Retired
Rumsfeld died in Taos. He should have died in The Hague.
MJS
@Roger Moore: I think the Republicans get to nominate their reps, which Pelosi may or may not be able to veto. But in my opinion, Kinzinger is suspect. He voted for Trump. In 2020.
Seanly
@waspuppet:
I was going to say something along those lines…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MJS: pretty sure I heard the Speaker can veto McCarthy’s picks. She ought to send him the short list of people she’ll approve, or go public with a list of non-starters
MJS
@Baud: I didn’t mean to imply that you were justifying it. I was responding to “on the heels of”.
Baud
@MJS:
Geologically speaking.
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
I don’t care where it was. As long as there is grass to piss on.
Almost Retired
@waspuppet: Do war criminals die in threes like entertainment celebrities? Tread carefully Cheney and Kissinger.
Wanderer
C’est la vie.
JML
Just saw Bill Cosby is getting released. Yuck.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
Do we know who are the 19 Republican cowards who didn’t vote at all?
Immanentize
@Almost Retired: no reason to nitpick where he died…. He dead
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
My assumption is that McCarthy will name the worst bunch of seditionists he can find as his recommendations for the committee- I assume Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert will be among his suggestions- as a way of trying to please the base. When they’re summarily rejected, it will give him one more excuse to complain about the process.
Immanentize
@Ruckus: you are so fancy. I don’t need no stinking grass! Just point me to the dirt pit he is put in.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
I heard a bunch of them were in Texas posturing about the border.
Splitting Image
Pretty good year for funerals so far. Still wondering why the holdup on Kissinger and Cheney, but for now I’ll settle for Rummy and be happy about it.
opiejeanne
@Cacti: I remember thinking the same. The country didn’t sleepwalk into that war, we raced into it based on lies fed to us by Cheney et al. for oil.
A day or two before we invaded Iraq, I was dropping something off at a friend’s house, she a devout, lifelong Democrat and me, no longer much of a Republican, and her tv was on a news station talking about the coming war with Iraq. She started ranting about how we were going to pay them back for 9/11, and I said, “The people who flew those planes weren’t Iraqis, and they aren’t in Iraq. Iraq played no part that we know of in the attack. The people who flew the planes were mostly Saudis, and the people who planned it are hiding out in Afghanistan.”
It was really like watching a spell being broken. the way her eyes glazed over for a moment, and she agreed with me in shocked tones when she was able to speak.
Funny enough, my dad, a lifelong Republican and a fan of W and Rush, was disgusted by the war and noted that Iraq should not be our target if we wanted revenge.
Immanentize
@Roger Moore: Just an FYI, McCarthy can consult about five positions, not choose five members. It is the exact same wording as the Benghazi select committee. Pelosi has the selection power over each position. She has indicated she may include a republican — Liz Cheney.
dr. bloor
@MJS: Actually, the equivalent would be more like declaring war on China for Pearl Harbor in June of 43.
Roger Moore
@Splitting Image:
Neither God nor Satan wants them.
Geminid
@Soprano2: The Gulf War had also given many people the impression that the U.S. military was more or less omnipotent. Our failure to take Baghdad in that war was seen as an act of forbearance, when it was actually based on a realistic understanding of the difficulty of occupying a sizable, hostile country.
Ruckus
@Immanentize:
I’ve pissed in the ocean before, I can do so again, we don’t even need dirt.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Some how I see that list a lot longer than 2.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
To quote a Famous Internet Commenter, bleccch.
sdhays
Extra points to you for accuracy – no suggestion that he’s “living”. The undead aren’t really alive.
laura
My pancreas is spurting bile at the happy news that Madison Avenue’s own boy has slunk off to meet his maker. The shopping list for far flung places in the world to set ablaze for the sheer profits that so many of our Sunday morning show sponsors deem their right with accountability to none was quite the happy task for a banal Botany 500’d assistant to the regional manager. The absolute face of the Chicago School in bringing free market policies that have served us so well. The absolute waste of blood and treasure, loosing the dogs of war for no reason but profit and oil and power is going to blowback for generations. I’m not sure how to mark the passing of this colossal amoral egotistical shite bag, but I’m going to do a quick wiki on Elliot Abrams, Kissinger, Jerry Bremmer and Ari Fleisher. They all warrant keeping an eye on.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought I saw the final vote with 88 NV, which is not voting. Maybe I got that wrong?
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Did she come out and say that it would be Cheney, or is that speculation?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Pelosi said she would name 5 Republicans and the pool of acceptable Republicans is pretty small.
JustRuss
@Soprano2:
Not quite sure what you mean. Among the general population, sure, opinion was divided, although I’m not sure what the split was.
But among people who mattered, it was nearly unanimous. Media ignored the anti-war protests, and “experts” on all the news shows were almost all war-mongers, some being paid by the Pentagon. The Iraq War Resolution passed 243-107. After the invasion began, yellow ribbons and American flags appeared on like half the cars on the road. There was a ton of enthusiasm for that stupid war.
Old School
@WaterGirl: It was 19 NV per the screen shot at:
@Cheryl Rofer:
sdhays
@MJS: If you’re looking for a Republican Congressperson that didn’t vote for Dump in 2020 (and would admit to it), you can stop right now. There isn’t one.
Regarding Kinzinger, a friend of mine has actually met him. My friend has met a large number of the Illinois Republican Congressional delegation and has even met Kevin McCarthy (under duress – he despises these people), and he singled out Kinzinger as being particularly unimpressive.
But he does seem sincere as being pissed that the attempted insurrection occurred and he’s burned some bridges. I’d be pretty wary of Cheney if I were Pelosi. She has ambitions post-Committee, so being helpful to Republicans is part of her incentives.
Brachiator
@opiejeanne:
I don’t think we got any oil out of Iraq. I don’t think we were ever going to get any oil out of the Iraq War.
It was easier to accept a cynical mercenary reason than the insane, revenge and resentments motivated reasons actually behind this folly.
ETA: It is not entirely the same situation, but I am old enough to remember some people insisting with extreme vehemence that we were really in Vietnam for oil.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Never mind. Another Scott took care of it.
Geminid
@opiejeanne: I think that war alienated a lot of Republican voters. I noticed that 2004 was the year formerly Republican Albemarle County first gave a majority to the Democratic Presidential candidate. (this relatively affluent county surrounds Charlottesville, Virginia). One reason Virginia Republican leaders were so welcoming to the tea party cranks who showed up after McCain lost was that they knew they needed to replace these defectors.
Bush political strategist Karl Rove had a plan to build a permanent Republican majority. He might have pulled it off if Cheney and Rumsfeld hadn’t talked Bush into the Iraq war. And while Bush has never admitted the war was a mistake, much less wrong, I think he would take that decision back in a heartbeat if he could.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Has McCarthy said whether he will take up Speaker Pelosi’s generous offer to consult on the R appointees?
WaterGirl
@Old School: I must have seen the tally for a different vote that was taken after that one! thanks
L85NJGT
He was brought in as the systems guy who was going to put a hatchet to DoD procurement costs. That was after Fred Smith said no fucking way to his old Yale buddy. So yeah, pretty much that war’s McNamara. Wrong guy, wrong job, wrong war.
MomSense
@Aziz, light!:
FTW!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh. Last I heard, Pelosi was thinking of using one of HER 8 slots on a Republican. So instead of 8-5 it would be 7-6, and that’s too close for comfort for me.
I hope she has backed off of that. All it would take would be for that Republican to be not trustworthy (which they are by definition) and we could have our hands tied.
Mike in NC
I was a reservist in 2003, but had active duty friends in the Pentagon. They said if Rummy held a meeting and had people question or disagree with him, they were never invited back to another meeting. Same way it was with the Orange Clown.
Barry
May the Lord damn him to hell.
Roger Moore
@laura:
I sure hope not! Bile normally comes from the liver. The stuff from the pancreas is called, I kid you not, pancreatic juice.
Suzanne
@Ruckus:
Maybe we could rent a boat and have a blog field trip. I’ll happily spend time and money to piss on Rumsfeld’s cremains.
Almost Retired
@Roger Moore: Right. That explains all the trendy pancreatic juice bars.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Baud: black president.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl:
Horse’s mouth (the bill in the Rules Committee) (15 page .pdf)
I assume the final bill looks the same.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I don’t think there was a single reason for going into Iraq. Part of the reason it had so much support was that there was something in it for everyone. Yes, there were people who were motivated by revenge. There were also idiots who bought the idea we’d be able to set up a democracy there that would spread across the Arab world. Others were probably after oil or lucrative defense contracts. People like Karl Rove thought it was going to help the Republicans politically.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I’m in.
I got paid to piss in the ocean while in the navy, I’d pay to do this.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): Exactly so. People I’d known all my life completely failed any logic test. Total fucking cult. Agree and (apparently) suddenly stupid and violent.
Anotherlurker
Regarding the passing of Donald Rumsfeld: We all must remember that he was a child of god, beloved of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. He is now resting in the lavish bosom of the Holy Ghost and enjoying the forgiveness…… OH FUCK IT!! I can’t even do satire anymore!!
I hope the scumbag asshole is enjoying an hourly massage from a Demon wielding a blowtorch followed by Deep anal sex with a rusty chainsaw.
Ruckus
@Anotherlurker:
All things considered he likely would enjoy that…..
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Nah, that external precipitating event was 9/11, which set off the madness of turning large rocks into small rocks in Afghanistan. Iraq II Boogaloo was simply madness.
satby
My memory of Rumsfeld is how little concerned he was that parents of Marines (probably Army parents too) about to be deployed were doing fundraisers to buy their kids body armor rather than allow the military to send our sons to war in obsolete gear. Along with the unarmored vehicles so vulnerable to roadside bombs.
And then how, after that became known, they tried to insist that the deployed troops only use the military issue old gear, which cost hundreds of lives. My kid used the body armor I bought him through 5 deployments, then left it behind for someone else to use after his last one. I hope Rumsfeld is roasting in hell.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I don’t either. I don’t think that oil was ever really one of them. Hell, keeping Saddam in power was better for some of the big money interests.
But ultimately, every reason for attacking Iraq was stupid and self-defeating.
Cheney and the neocons loved to try to stoke the inane Vietnam War sentiment that “if only the military had been allowed to fully engage, we could have won Vietnam.” This time they were going to show how military conquest should be done the right way.
They never had a fucking clue. About Vietnam or about Iraq. Or pretty much anything.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
I was looking for the C-SPAN screenshot I saw earlier, but now can’t remember where. But found this, which says 19 did not vote.
Now I’m going to scroll through the list of members and see who, specifically, were too craven to go on the record.
ETA: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021197
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Seriously, this is quite confusing to me. BoJo and his government play up the fact that they were able to get vaccines out faster than the EU. And they do seem to have more vaccinated. But they’ve got a small fraction of the population of the EU (68M vs 445M)… Delta is calling.
I’ve noticed that the 7-day rolling average for infections in the USA is increasing again, also too.
Be careful out there… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Almost Retired
Nicolle Wallace just closed her show by reading Rumsfeld’s obituary in her best hostage statement voice.
Chief Oshkosh
@Chief Oshkosh: “Agree” = “Angry”
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: That fits with what I know, too. But that doesn’t mean she can’t choose a republican for one of her 8. And she said earlier this week that she was thinking of doing just that.
So I’m not finding anything in the rules that is enlightening.
WaterGirl
@satby: Rumsfield: “Oh, well, you go to war with the equipment you have, not the equipment you want. ?♀️”
Fuck him. Utter disregard for life. No humanity.
southend
Love that song. One of my favorite S & G tunes.
Anotherlurker
@Ruckus: Wow! I never thought of that.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, I pretty much figured out that I was looking at the result of the next thing they must have voted on after that. Because what I saw definitely said 88 NV, and then I went back to watch Nancy speaking. So they may well have moved on to something else and that was the vote I saw.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Oil was a big part of the rationale for many of the participants.
We knew a mortgage banker back then that knew a bunch of people at the Pentagon. The rumors she heard said that the war was inevitable because W and his people were pushing so hard for it and would keep looking for rationales until they found one that could get it through Congress…
It was visceral for W, and the PNAC and Oil Uber Alles guys weren’t going to let the chance pass them by.
Cheers,
Scott.
biff murphy
Off to the land of “known unknowns”…
Geminid
@Roger Moore: McCarthy cannot name commitee members. Pelosi will consult him. If he puts up nonsensical prospects like Boebert or Gohmert, Pelosi will just have to try and find five Republicans on her own. Maybe some of the ten Republican impeachers will be willing to serve responsibly on the Committee. If not, Pelosi will pick more Democrats. She has plenty of good ones to choose from.
Kevin McCarthy will piss and moan for sure. But with one exception, I’m not sure anyone besides Washington lobbyists and journalists really cares what McCarthy says. His own caucus members are not solidly behind him. Some would like to replace him, and for others , McCarthy is just better than nothing.
But trump cares what McCarthy says, and he is the Minority Leader’s most important audience. McCarthy desperately wants to regain the House majority lost in 2018. He has bet on trump’s willingness and ability to deliver his voters next year. So McCarthy will do what trump wants, and hope that his fickle master comes through in next years midterms.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Fun fact: that was Cole’s original name for this blog.
Nora Lenderbee
I was having a bad day, so I reminded myself that Scalia, Limpbaugh and Lee Atwater were still dead. Now I feel even better.
Sure Lurkalot
@Immanentize: Ugh, terrible choice. Liz Cheney who voted with Trump over 90% of the time, does not believe in free and fair elections, is just as ridiculous about immigration as the showboats down at the border today.
laura
@Roger Moore: My internal organs revile Rummy. The Pancreas and The Liver agreed to work in tandem as an act of solidarity to show the appropriate level of distain. But I appreciate the gut check. ☺
Mallard Filmore
@Another Scott:
Can the minority leader refuse to consult?
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
One of them – Wolfowitz, maybe? – was quoted later on as saying exactly that – that everyone involved had different reasons, but WMDs were what they could agree on.
Not only did those assholes torture a bunch of people and cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but they pretty much destabilized the region, sending millions into exile, and left our least favorite nation in the region, Iran, as the dominant power there.
And people forget that under Saddam, as horrible as he could be, women could go to college and hold jobs and stuff. That all went away real fast after the statue came down. Has it ever come back?
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I heard the same rumor – probably here – that she might pick one R. But I think the larger point is, she knows how this stuff works. She’s going to pick people that are sensible and isn’t going to let the GQP crap all over the job that needs to be done.
It will be interesting to see how McQarthy wants to play this. Presumably he will want to discredit it, but will he go so far as to suggest people that the Speaker will veto? IOW, will he figure it’s better to have someone inside, or better to paint it as a 100% Democratic committee? (I’ll bet on the latter.)
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
The Onion did a wonderful article right after 9-11 of the hijackers arriving in the afterlife, to find they would spend eternity getting buggered by demons with saw-blade penises (rather than the 72 virgins of their dreams).
Hopefully Rummy will be right there by them getting the same treatment. And at some point, hopefully soon, Cheney and Kissinger can join them all.
Elizabelle
Here are the 19 Republicans not voting. A lot of Texans, some of whom were presumably cavorting at the border with the Insurrectionist in Chief.
Only names I for sure recognized were Gohmert, Darryl Issa (yuck; forgot he was back) and the deplorable Bob “Good” of Virginia. They are (and hope I got them all):
Arrington of Texas
Banks of Indiana
Carter of Georgia
Cloud of Texas
Fulcher of Idaho
Gohmert of LunaticLand
Good of Virginia
Herrell of New Mexico
Higgins of Louisiana
Issa of California
(Dr. Ronny??) Jackson of Texas
Johnson of Louisiana
Miller of Illinois
Pfluger of Texas
Rose of Tennessee
Roy of Texas
Tiffany of Wisconsin
Weber of Texas
Williams of Texas
Chris Johnson
Stray thought: I wonder if Pelosi can set up the committee so that you sign on to it? And the seditionists have to sign something to get on? And it turns out that they’ve signed assent to investigations of their personal records and publicising the results, alongside the personal records of the Dems on the committee?
Also I’d like a pony :D
But I would like some of the cagier Dems to be laying interesting traps for the very predictable seditionists.
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott:
Hell, the greaseball that licked his comb before dragging it through his hair (wtf was that guy’s name?) actually BRAGGED about how they simply made up causes to go to war until they hit on one that they agreed would get support. Once all six agreed on “weapons of mass destruction,” they were off to the races. The six were Bush, Rummy, Cheney, Rice, Powell, …and the greaseball.
Gettin’ old, can’t remember the guy’s name. Real greasy looking shitheel…
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Gotta cite? I hadn’t heard of Iraq regressing so much on women’s freedoms.
Catherine D.
@Almost Retired:
Well, Milton Friedman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Augusto Pinochet died within weeks of each other in 2006. That was my happy trifecta.
Ken
So if Pelosi gives the minority leader a thirty-second phone call, then appoints 13 Democrats, the letter of the law is observed.
artem1s
@coin operated:
Oh, I like that. I’ve been trying to figure out the perfect retort to teh deplorables I dropped from my life. May I steal it?
artem1s
@Catherine D.:
Not necessary, Cheney is already undead. Has been for decades.
Geminid
@satby: When Robert Gates took over as Secretary of Defense after the 2006 midterms, one of the first things he did was to approve the Army’s pending request for mine resistant vehicles (MRAPs). Gates understood these would save American lives, and had them shipped by air. Although combat engineers had proven the MRAPs’ worth, Rumsfeld sat on the requests for a year.
sdhays
@satby: There was so much awful, I had forgotten how those shitheads CHOSE to invade Iraq without preparing the armor necessary. I don’t understand how anyone can be in the military and actually want Republicans running shit.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
The point is that the EU agreed that the vaccines would be distributed to all their countries in proportion to their population, so none of them are allowed to get way ahead. If the UK were still part of the EU, they would have been forced to share their doses rather than keeping them for themselves. So from a purely selfish standpoint, leaving the EU has allowed the UK to vaccinate faster.
Elizabelle
@artem1s: “Values” works too. Morals and values.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
As I see it, there were two problems with his “you go to war with the military you have” comment:
Another Scott
@Chief Oshkosh: Was it Caspar Weinberger?
Ah, no, Google tells me it was Paul Wolfowitz.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Some good news out of Chapel Hill. 9-4 vote.
UNC board [of Trustees] approves tenure for journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones after uproar over inaction on job protection
Chief Oshkosh
@Roger Moore:
You may be too young to have lived through it or too old to remember that long ago, but the Rummy and the rest of the GOP blamed all of that on Clinton. Oddly enough, Trump and the GOP did the same with Obama.
Soprano2
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: I assume she’ll be gracious about the tenure, work there for a year or so with her McArthur “genius” grant, and then be happy to take a new position at another university that doesn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing and rewarding good people independent of their race and gender.
Sheesh.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
Never underestimate people’s stubbornness in refusing to admit a mistake. A frequent advantage of bringing in someone new is that they can fix the previous guy’s mistakes without admitting to personal failure for having caused them.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: No-good Bob Good won the Virginia 5th by only 5 points lasg November. Next year Democrats here will go all out to send him back to Liberty U where he belongs. I’m hoping the new redistricting commission helps by putting Lynchburg back in the 5th District, where it belongs.
Quiltingfool
Re: Select Committee. A word from Trae Crowder, Liberal Redneck
https://twitter.com/traecrowder/status/1409968400978247680?s=20
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: I think she can do a lot of good at Chapel Hill. Hello Nikole. Goodbye, Silent Sam. (Sam has been replaced by a tree.)
Elizabelle
@Geminid: I hope so. Good is proudly a deplorable. Yuck.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
Non existent long term memory, both voluntary and involuntary.
Along with being evil MFs.
Frank Wilhoit
“…Rumsfeld…had absolutely no interest in self-reflection….doesn’t give…so much as a hint of introspection or regret.”
Precisely the profile of the psychopaths who self-select for positions of power. We have (evidently) no defense against this. Rumsfeld could (like so very, very many others — let us not pay him even the inadvertent compliment of singling him out) have been diagnosed at the age of 5 or 6 and should then have been sequestered — treated perfectly humanely and with the utmost kindness, but never let anywhere near sane people.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I am glad there is a place on the intertubes where this is good news.
CarolPW
@Quiltingfool: Thank you, that made me smile (and it has been a while). A southern accent is delightful when it doesn’t have dumbfuck plastered on it.
Geminid
@Soprano2: Not only would Al Gore not have attacked Iraq, the 9/11 attack probably would not have occurred on his watch. Cobra II authors Gordon and Trainer say that Bill Clinton tried to impress upon George Bush the threat that Al Quaeda posed. But the Bush team thought they were the hardheaded national security pros, and dismissed the warnings of those they considered amateurs.
Omnes Omnibus
That’s a crock of shit.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: Bob Good is every bit as bad as Boebert and Greene, just not as flamboyant. With some probable Democratic losses next year due to reapportionment and redistricting, flipping the VA 5th will be a top Democratic priority.
Cheryl Rofer
Donald Rumsfeld, Killer of 400,000 People, Dies Peacefully
Daily Beast
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer: low estimate, or did they do some kind of break out between him and Cheney?
(couldn’t resist, but that’s a great headline for an often Villagey-leaning outlet)
evodevo
@Another Scott: Yes. This. Oil was first, then as an afterthought they pushed the idea that once established, democracy would somehow spread via osmosis throughout the ME, plus put a stick in Iran’s wheel…but the people in charge after the initial invasion were so incompetent and clueless that there was never a chance that was going to happen.
My conservative Army-wife sister is STILL convinced that “we helped the Iraqis with new hospitals” etc. etc. and that was a good reason for 4400+ men to die (???). And her career Army husband is STILL convinced that if the dirty hippies/protesters hadn’t interfered, we would have won in Viet Nam (he was never deployed…spent the whole time on base here in the US)
Frank Wilhoit
@Omnes Omnibus: Someone — I am blanking on the name right now — wrote that a society may be judged by how it treats its mentally ill.
How do we treat ours? Most are treated with unfathomable sadism, deprived of any resources or support, every man’s hand against them. The rest, a tiny handful, are elevated to positions of power: Rumsfeld, Trump, name your favorites.
Which set are treated “better”? I reject both options, with the same horror.
But there is a further point, and I wonder whether this is what frets you. Who are mental hospitals (or, for that matter, prisons) about? Are they about the persons on the inside, or about the persons on the outside? Who, proportionally, was degraded by “de-institutionalization”, and, therefore, who was meant to be degraded by it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Wilhoit: No, what “frets” me is the idea that anyone can believe that they can determine enough about small children to justify sequestering them from society on the off chance that they might grow up to be Don Rumsfeld-like.
citizen dave
Saw this on the news broadcast tonight–just stopping by to say Good F-ing Riddance.
Matt
“surrounded by friends and family”? A damn shame, the only people that should have been around when he died was his co-conspirators and the guy pulling the lever on the gallows.
Rot in piss, Donnie.
Cermet
Truly wonderful news (except for the poor worms that he will make sick) but bush, cheney’s puppet needs to join him as well as bloody hand’s cheney. Throw in the rump and then it would be perfect
TomatoQueen
Liza Minelli has accomplished so much in her life. And so I am proud to join her in the one thing I’ve wanted to do since moving back to this benighted town 21 years ago, and that is to outlive Donald Rumsfeld. So Liza, wanna go for the big one? Bet between us we can outlive Dick and Henry without even breathing hard.
Leto
I’ll happily dance on his grave. Glad the fucker is dead.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I mainly remember these dopes straining to connect Saddam to terrorists and the huffing and puffing over WMDs. And spurious bullshit about nation building and Chalabi being a possible legitimate successor to Saddam.
And again, the US and other Western interests could more reliably make money from stability in Iraq, not by toppling the government and disrupting their oil industry.
And this …
This is oddly circular. There is no profit in this, nor was it a sure bet.
BTW, what has been the net impact of our Iraq folly on oil markets? Have we even reliably helped the Kurds to get a beneficial share of Iraqi oil?
Another Scott
@Brachiator: I wasn’t saying I agreed with the rationale, just relaying what I remembered. E.g. TheAtlantic:
CSMonitor:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frank Wilhoit
@Omnes Omnibus: I defer to the experts. I have read that major mental illness, and particularly sociopathy, can be diagnosed very early. In fact, I have seen that so often that I took it for a commonplace. But it and I could certainly be wrong.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2:
I’ve mostly heard this from leftier-than-thou types trying to equate the two parties.
J R in WV
@MJS:
No, because Japan actually attacked the US. Iraq never attacked the US, and never allowed bin Laden and his crew to set up training camps in rural Iraq. The WW2 equivalent would be declaring war on Australia after Pearl Harbor, or any other innocuous south Pacific nation that never attacked us.
scav
Yup. Still pleased. I’ll probably be back in an even more deader than dead thread to reassure myself of this baseline.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Wilhoit: Go ahead and start a campaign to lock up six year olds for their own good and see how it flies.
Ruckus
Is Rumsfeld still dead?
Just checking, because good news is still good to hear again.
Cheryl from Maryland
To quote me from another blog – As a retired employee of the Smithsonian and thus both a Federal employee and an artsy type, one of my favorite and extremely ironic possessions is a certificate signed (probably auto penned) by Rumsfeld honoring my service to the US in ending the Cold War. Take that, you dead asshole.
sab
@Cheryl from Maryland: Do you really have one?
ETA How ironic. All I ever got from Rumsfeld was a very bad flu shot that made me avoid flu shots for 20 years.
ETA Rumsfeld round one. He pushed an iffy swine flu vaccine, and after the Ford administration went to work for that vaccinnes pharma co. I wouldn’t be surprised if a big proportion of current vaccine reluctance is from bad results from that vaccine.
mrmoshpotato
@Ruckus:
Yes. And Limbaugh is still dead too.
(I just found out about the war criminal’s descent into Hell via Kurt Eichenwald’s Twitter Account.)
scav
@scav: Still good.