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posted by Doug 3:32 PM

Resign, Rumsfeld.

That's the title of the cover story in The Economist. It brings up all the points you don't want to miss: That this, by Rumsfeld's definition, was a war about values. That the ultimate goal of all this was supposed to be Freedom, Human Rights, and Democracy. That images such as the one below, have become worldwide iconic representations of an American hypocrisy. (and the ones we've seen on the media are not even the least of it.) and that he was well aware of the abuses back in January and failed to inform Congress, the media and the American public that such abuses existed (despite his assertion that he did tell us: Rummy, if you had told us, we would have known).

Ladies and Gentleman (all four of you who read this blog), if we don't fire Rumsfeld as a show that we, as Americans, will not stand for this kind of abuse, well, I don't know what we're fighting for. If we can no longer say "We are making their lives better," if we can no longer assert that our only aim is to give them a stable, democratic government, then what the hell are we doing?

Oh, Tony Pierce's Bus Blog has a good excerpt from the transcripts of Rumsfeld testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Here's a nice excerpt of his excerpt of Rumsfeld getting his ass handed to him (oh, for some context, they're speaking about Rumsfeld & Company calling CBS to ask them not to broadcast the pictures on 60 Minutes prior to everything getting exposed anyway:

RUMSFELD: May I speak a minute, Mr. Senator?

Throughout the history of this country, there have been instances where military situations have existed that have led government to talk to members of the media and make an editorial request of them that they delay for some period disclosing some piece of information. It is not against our history. It is not against our principles. It is not suppression of the news. And it's a misunderstanding of the situation to say it is.

Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.): It is against our principles. It's against our principles when you come before 40 to 45 members of the Senate three hours before that news report is going to occur and don't mention one word about it, sir.

That is antithetical to democracy and the Constitution, which has the Senate and the House as co-equal responsibility for this country.

I want to just ask about the escalation of American forces, sir. You're bringing in, in response to all of this -- and this is also important. This is the future of this nation and the people who are over there.

You're increasing the number of forces, the number of tanks over there. How can this have anything to do but to escalate the level of violence, the opposition of Iraqis, intensify the hatred across the Arab world to the United States, and more atrocities? How can this have any result other than to put us deeper into this situation and make the conditions there worse for our forces and for our nation and for the world?

Here's the full transcript from The Washington Post

anyway. enough of my tirade.

posted by Doug 10:14 AM

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