Dear me. Apparently Rummy thinks I'm an appeaser, all because I think his policies are and have been poorly thought out, miserably executed, and have had the opposite effect to that which was planned.
Rumsfeld spoke to the American Legion as part of a coordinated White House strategy, in advance of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to take the offensive against administration critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq and growing calls to withdraw U.S. troops.Rumsfeld recalled a string of recent terrorist attacks, from 9/11 to deadly bombings in Bali, London and Madrid, and said it should be obvious to anyone that terrorists must be confronted, not appeased.
"But some seem not to have learned history's lessons," he said, adding that part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.
He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor.
Hooray for Sergeant Smith. Was it posthumously awarded?
Look, Don. You have shown yourself to be the worst kind of manager. You ignored advice from your more-experienced subordinates (General Shinseki), you refused to accept that there was a serious threat of insurgency in Iraq (dead-enders), you insisted that Abu Ghraib was carried out by "a few bad apples" when in fact it appears to have been approved policy emanating from your office, and you still don't recognize that you've been wrong on all the above-mentioned items. If you worked for Donald Trump he'd have fired you after the first round of The Apprentice.
Those of us who don't agree with you are not appeasers, we're just smarter than you are. When one of our ideas fails, we try something else. We don't insist on sticking with policies that have been shown to be counter-productive.
Posted by Linkmeister at August 29, 2006 02:44 PM | TrackBack