Rumsfeld: The conversation continues
On Friday, we talked about calls from a number of US retired generals for Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld to resign. It sparked a great discussion on air, but the conversation continued online well after the programme. Read on for the summary.
Dymphna who writes the blog, Gates of Vienna, said on the programme that most of the generals who were complaining about Donald Rumsfeld were appointed during the Clinton administration.
Here is what she said about it:
When I noted that these safely-retired flag-rank officers were undercutting the civilian commander (under the President) of the armed forces, I also noted that these men were largely Clinton appointments. In other words, they are remnants from a different era and are even more marginal than the man they criticize.
She has a good roundup of links to other bloggers defending Secretary Rumsfeld.
Another blogger who joined our discussion, Joe Gandelman, wrote a post responding to Dymphna's criticism of the generals as Clinton appointees in entitled, Did You Know That BILL CLINTON Is To Blame For The Generals Demanding Rumsfeld's Resignation?
The idea that every problem that happens or every botched government response is because Bill Clinton is to blame or somehow linked to it has gotten very OLD.
I had e-mailed a number of bloggers, inviting them to take part in the discussion. Not all of them got back to me in time to join the programme, but they did post after the discussion.
Weldon Berger writes on the site, BTC News, and he wrote after the programme: Is the military assault on Rumsfeld about Iran, not Iraq?
It seems likely that the generals have adopted the Bush administration doctrine of preemption, and are moving to nuke Rumsfeld before he gets them into another, even more ill-advised war.
A pre-emptive strike, if you wil,l before plans move forward to attack Iran?
That's just a taster of the discussion online about Rumsfeld, Iraq and Iran. What do you think?
