III.
Run Dick, run!
Dicked Again
II.
.. the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Axis of Evil
I.
Considering Rummy’s track record, I’d feel a whole lot better if he was predicting civil war in Iraq.
The Rumsfeld Effect
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August 24, 2005
WB: The Rumsfeld Effect + Axis of Evil + Dicked Again
Comments
bush wants a theocracy in the US. why not in iraq?
Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Aug 24 2005 6:21 utc | 1
Saw this one coming three years away.
Maybe we’ll have a voting system where you need 5 Shi’ite votes to cancel one Sunni?
The mindfucks over at the White House are probably truly regretting the day they got rid of Saddam Hussein. Him they could talk to, the Shi’ites will throw them out.
Chalabi is one smooth operator, obviously.
Posted by: SteinL | Aug 24 2005 6:33 utc | 2
Rumsfeld might put it this way:
“From an historical perspective, the democratic process involves parties who might or might not agree on certain issues, and therefore, we can expect some discussion to last an undetermined amount of time, which might or might not result in some degree of conflict among the various parties concerned. Democracy is not necessarily an easy thing to achieve and it could involve an expenditure of time, the amount of which we are uncertain of at present.”
Posted by: jm | Aug 24 2005 7:38 utc | 3
Wow!
This is a darn good rumsfeldism!
Do you have a source for that gem?
They’re all in same vein, ‘freedom’s untidy’, ‘the army you might have’, ‘known unknown knowns’
I think if you gave the guy the opportunity to do something that had a 51% probalility of solving all foreign policy problems, and a 49% one of resulting in total thermonuclear war, he would jump on it.
The odds are favourable, dammit!!
Posted by: victor falk | Aug 24 2005 8:49 utc | 4
They may have the same talking points, but I think that Bush is hoping this “Constitution” will help him get the hell out of Iraq, while the Iranians are hoping to work their way into Iraq. Bush does want to find a way to get out of Iraq, right? Just checking…
Posted by: steve expat | Aug 24 2005 8:56 utc | 5
Rumsfeld is ridiculous. He thinks he is an intellectual. I love to invent statements he would make as he seems to stop just short of getting lost in his jibberish. And he deals mostly in hypotheticals, meaning he doesn’t have a fucking clue when asked a question. I remember the days of political stand-up comedy and he is perfect material. Had I followed the suggestion of so many and entered this profession, I would have used his bullshit copiously, but under the circumstances, I mostly entertain myself with parodies of his fractured attempts at self expression.
This one’s real, though:
You can always find someone who’s going to try to be a dead-ender.
This kind of makes him a prophet as well as an intellectual.
Posted by: jm | Aug 24 2005 9:56 utc | 6
The Constitution will be thrown out if it is refused by at least a 2/3 majority in 3 provinces (out of 18.) The Sunnis are dominant in 4 provinces and are mobilising to vote. Fatwas (rending voting obligatory) are flying.
(from my reading: I haven’t looked up the laws / regulations.)
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 24 2005 10:11 utc | 7
I remember the days of political stand-up comedy and he is perfect material.
And if Iraq dumps the metric system, poor ole Rummy will be flying blind.
Posted by: Groucho | Aug 24 2005 11:05 utc | 8
“You can always find someone who’s going to try to be a dead-ender and say, ‘If you don’t do this, I won’t do that.’ But that’s part of negotiation. We see that in the Congress and we see it in democratic systems all over the world.”
Sure Don.
One member of Congress says to another, “if you don’t do this I’ll kill you and your family.”
Hey, happens all the time inside the Beltway.
Democracy in Action.
What a dipstick.
Posted by: Angry Blue Planet | Aug 24 2005 11:26 utc | 9
What amuses me is Rummy’s use of ‘dead-ender’ as if it was still a term of derision. Those he was calling ‘dead-enders’ two summers ago are far more effective today than they were then, and have the clear advantage over us in Iraq.
Posted by: RT | Aug 24 2005 13:53 utc | 11
rumsfeld’s reply to a press question re pat robertson’s call for the assassination of hugo chavez: “He’s a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time.”
Posted by: b real | Aug 24 2005 14:42 utc | 13
What would Bush’s own Sharia court look like? Dobbsie, for sure. Robertson? (an international law expert) Jack van Impe? (talk about a dead-ender) Graham Jr./Sr.? Who will handle the Leviticus part?
Posted by: 4-fingers | Aug 24 2005 15:01 utc | 14
Mission fucking accomplished.
What mission? It changes as soon as the last one becomes impossible. The troops today are fighting for one purpose; to keep themselves and their buddies alive. And we “stay the course” fight on for the sole purpose of honoring those who have already fallen — now there’s a recipe for a war without end.
Posted by: Marie | Aug 24 2005 15:54 utc | 15
By changing a couple words this is what we get.
“The secular leaders said the draft, which was presented to the Congress Monday, contains language that not only establishes the primacy of Christianity as the country’s official religion, but appears to grant judges wide latitude to strike down legislation that may contravene the faith. To interpret such legislation, the constitution calls for the appointment of experts in the Bible, or Christian law, to preside on the Supreme Court.
The draft constitution, these secular Iraqis say, clears the way for religious authorities to adjudicate personal disputes like divorce, gay marriage, and abortion matters by allowing the establishment of religious courts, raising fears that a popularly elected Christian-minded government could enact legislation and appoint judges who would turn the country into a theocracy.”
Posted by: bcinaz | Aug 24 2005 16:03 utc | 16
Worse than big dick:
Democrats in Congress 5 26 40 25 4 Pos: 31 Neg: 65
Posted by: apthorp | Aug 24 2005 16:57 utc | 17
By changing a couple words this is what we get.
Problem is, the biblethumpers want that in America AND Iraq. Which means our little Christian soldier is going to have some ‘splain to do to his wing nut base. I don’t think even they can remain in fantasy land on this one much longer. (See my most recent post.)
Posted by: Billmon | Aug 24 2005 17:09 utc | 18
Angry Blue Planet wrote:
Sure Don.
One member of Congress says to another, “if you don’t do this I’ll kill you and your family.”
Hey, happens all the time inside the Beltway.
Democracy in Action.
You’re a bit behind the times. Actually it does happen w/these guys. Probably far more than we know, but here’s the obvious instance.
Cheney told Sen. Wellstone that if he opposed the War on Iraq there would be “dire consequences for him & his family”. Sen. Wellstone didn’t heed the warning & voted against the resolution. Shortly thereafter, on the last day that he could be killed & have his name removed from the Minnesota ballot, his plane crashed “for no apparent reason”. They made sure to kill his wife as well, so she couldn’t succeed him, and some of his children as well.
Posted by: jj | Aug 24 2005 18:17 utc | 19
@jj
You beat me to it… I was going to mention the hit on Sen. Wellstone by way of reply as well. When Rumsfeld talks about “dead enders”, he isn’t referring to their behaviour. He is referring to the US policy of responding to them.
I guess the difference between foreign and domestic policy in this regard is simply one of scale. For the countrymen of our elite, aggression is limited only to the person of detractors and their immediate families. Elsewhere, we’ll decimate entire cities to make a point.
It is qualitatively the same approach that Pat Robertson is using when he calls for the liquidation of Hugo Chávez. We know that Robertson’s posturing is only that of a private citizen aping what he sees as acceptable from the elites. If Chávez truly and deeply annoyed Cheney, anyone with Venezuelan citizenship would have difficulty getting a new life insurance policy.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 24 2005 21:57 utc | 20
Current (9/5) Newsweek: “Meanwhile, NEWSWEEK has learned, conservative Christian leaders privately are warning that Republicans will lose evangelical votes next year if the Iraqi constitution enshrines Islamic law at the expense of religious freedom there.”
Tinfoil hat: another sign that we won’t have any more elections in the forseeable future?
Posted by: Brian Boru | Aug 25 2005 2:35 utc | 22
October 4, 2004 – Rumsfeld’s reply to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations on his Department’s preparedness for an Iraqi Civil War:
>>
QUESTIONER: Mr. Secretary, my name is Steven Mukamal. On your previous visit, I thanked you for liberating the country of my birth. Today, I have a question for you: Do you have a scenario in case there is a civil war?
RUMSFELD: There is a risk of things happening in any country that one doesn’t want to happen. And when a particularly repressive government is removed, the repression ends, freedom is there. People are then free to be rational, or to be vicious killers. I mean, once you’re free, you are free to be a criminal, or you can be an anti-Semite; you can be a— go out and engage in ethnic cleansing, and do all kinds of things that are— that free people do in different parts of the globe.
Do I think it will happen? No. Do we worry about it? Anyone worries about all kinds of bad things happening, and thinks about them and what might be done.
>>
http://www.cfr.org/publication/7424/update_on_the_global_war_on_terror_with_donald_rumsfeld.html
Posted by: rm | Aug 26 2005 18:10 utc | 24
October 4, 2004 – Rumsfeld’s reply to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations on his Department’s preparedness for an Iraqi Civil War:
>>
QUESTIONER: Mr. Secretary, my name is Steven Mukamal. On your previous visit, I thanked you for liberating the country of my birth. Today, I have a question for you: Do you have a scenario in case there is a civil war?
RUMSFELD: There is a risk of things happening in any country that one doesn’t want to happen. And when a particularly repressive government is removed, the repression ends, freedom is there. People are then free to be rational, or to be vicious killers. I mean, once you’re free, you are free to be a criminal, or you can be an anti-Semite; you can be a— go out and engage in ethnic cleansing, and do all kinds of things that are— that free people do in different parts of the globe.
Do I think it will happen? No. Do we worry about it? Anyone worries about all kinds of bad things happening, and thinks about them and what might be done.
>>
Posted by: rm | Aug 26 2005 18:11 utc | 25