RUMSFELD RESIGNS (Holy Canoli - Part 2)
Dems In -- Rummy Out
Bush announced today that Rumsfeld is stepping down. He will be replaced by Robert Gates, former director of the CIA.
And the hits just keep on coming...
Rumsfeld firing
From TalkingPointsMemo:
"Watching this Bush presser, one thing about Republicans: man, they dispatch their dead quickly, don't they? I thought the most revealing line so far of the press conference was when Bush said he still hasn't spoken to Rumsfeld or Gates. The exact phrase was something like 'final conversation'. But I think the meaning there was clear.
Late Update: Okay, I think this presser may actually set a record for open and shut contradictions. But about five minutes after saying he hadn't had his final convos, he just said that he had. In the course of the last few minutes he's also said both that he hadn't decided to replace Rummy pre-election, and that he had. I think he also said he lied to the reporters in the pre-election conversation he had on Rumsfeld. "
Early retuns on Gates - not good!
This has much more info..
You weren't expecting
anyone with clean hands, now were you? An administration of crooks, by crooks and for crooks.
We may just get some oversight in their schemes, and an ability to shut some of them down. The Dems have two years to demonstrate that they are a worthy alternative to the Repugnants. I hope they are capable of this, but I have my doubts.
Criminal lawsuit sought against Rumsfeld and others
From Time.com:
" Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ." "
When I first read the headline
for your comment I though, 'oh great, something that will likely be poorly executed which will only serve the pundit-ocricy/GOP in saying how 'bitter' and 'fringe' the Dems are'.
The fact that it's an international case changes that however. Just let the GOP and their pundits say that it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks of us. Can anyone else imagine a better way to get the business vote?
One of the more interesting stories I heard this week came from Howard Fineman. He was remarking how business folk were relating how tired they were of going overseas and spending the first two hours of their business meeting listening to a lecture about our despot-in-chief.
Xenophobia is not such a great long-term strategy in a global market, apparently.
Without knowing who Robert Gates is
this almost makes me happier than the election results themselves. I hope it's not a false alarm (not in terms of Rumsfeld being gone, but that Gates somehow isn't worse).