The recent memoir of Rumsfeld comes with its own document dump. Searching through the pile Alexis Madrigal over at The Atlantic found this gem:
These are the musings of one of the key fools who took us into a needless war, squandered a surplus and created mountain ranges of debt. Back when the above memo was written there were were other fools celebrating Rumsfeld as a genus and the Iraq War as necessary. Now many of these same fools argue that we should follow their advice about the best way to clean up the massive shit pile their last round of deciding and cheer leading left behind.
How anybody takes any modern Conservative as serious about anything is beyond me. And yet, they do.
The only thing these so-called conservatives are good at is the next con, but that seems to be more than enough for the gullible–especially beltway focused media. So it goes.
Time for an open thread.
Cheers
freelancer
Dennis,
The internet has many inconsistencies on it.
Please address them and get back to me.
The Atlantic doesn’t seem to be going very well.
Also, we need to solve the FYWP problem.
Thanks.
cathyx
It’s like he’s not even aware that real human lives are at stake.
soonergrunt
And the press will never call him on it, and nobody but a lefty (my money is on either Ta-Nehisi Coates) will point out that this memo was addressed to the guy that GEN Tommy Franks famously called “the stupidest fucking guy on the planet.”
joe from Lowell
To: Freelancer
From: joe from Lowell
Subject: Issues w/ Weather
We need to reduce the damage from storms. Hurricanes and tornadoes kill a lot of people.
We also need to do something about flash floods.
Lightning strikes don’t seem very pleasant, either.
Get on that, ok?
Thanks.
Suffern ACE
Suddenly, I feel sympathy for Doug Feith.
PurpleGirl
Have you seen Paul Krugman’s blog today? Title: Opposition to Infrastructure Spending: The Origins. He has a quote from a book written in 1818 which talks about why the south doesn’t like infrastructure and its support. The line he prints in the blog, I think, can only be seen one way… the civil war was over slavery.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: And Franks isn’t exactly mensa material either, mustang or not.
aartimus
Please tell me this is a joke!
JPL
I really want to see Feith’s response.
Donald:
Forget the diplomacy, coercive works for me.
Cheney
The Dangerman
Were you thinking anus when you typed genus (sic)?
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, this is real? A real memo? Sent out by a
realSecretary of Defense? Well, fuck me to tears.numbskull
Man, I thought that was a miss by The Onion or Mad Magazine. You know, them trying to be funny, but missing the mark due to being too infantile.
But this was REAL?
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: You call that punk-ass motherfucker a real secretary of defense? spit
tBone
@joe from Lowell:
To: joe from Lowell
From: tBone
Re: issues w/Weather
Good points, but need to address famine too.
Someone needs to get on the pestilence issue also.
Still looking for your proposal on addressing the pony deficit in Iraq BTW. Please get to me soonest.
Dennis G.
@PurpleGirl:
It was when the global slave trade was coming to an end and there were fears that it could happen in America too. The entire “States Rights” argument and opposition to the Commerce Clause was all about the worry that a Federal Government that could decide where a canal went or a railroad could also make laws about moving slaves across state lines, how slaves were treated and restrict the expansion of slavery.
This is what the Civil War was about and Krugman is correct to point out that fear of the government restricting the theft of labor is still what motivates these neo-Confederates to action.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: I take your point. Correction made.
lllphd
pssst. dennis. given how much most of y’all over here detest most of the atlantic shill, i thought it might be a good idea to head over to tpm where they have a whole ton of these things. they were, after all, the ones who filed the foia for them. just sayin’
geg6
I saw that at Bennen’s place earlier today. Jeebus. Jeebus, Jeebus. I really didn’t think there was anything about a Bushie that could surprise me. I thought I’d seen all the stupid there was to see over the last ten years. But this may just take the cake.
When I remember how the Villagers DROOLED over him and called him brilliant and a sex symbol besides, I just want to scream and keep on screaming for about a month. What to do with the rage? What to do?
Chuck Butcher
Rummy is all over the media being taken seriously, as opposed to taken apart. Ah well.
ChrisNYC
Jay Garner said about Doug Feith that he was “incredibly dangerous.” That “he’s a very smart guy whose electrons aren’t connected, so he arc lights all the time.” I don’t know what it means (and I’ve Googled). But I love it. He was apparently a disaster as policy chief and basically hid in his office all the time.
And then there Feith is on CNN, holding forth on START or whatever, as a “senior Defense Dept official with the GWB admin.” Ugh.
beltane
Are the beltway media really being conned or are they in on the scam? Perhaps they are more malicious than gullible.
Dennis G.
@lllphd:
In credit where credit is due, TPM gave Alexis credit for this find and I saw no reason not to do the same.
Cheers
HyperIon
@Suffern ACE:
Nope.
I saw that douchebag on CSPAN last week.
People were actually listening to him.
I presume they were douchebags, too.
JPL
So did he dictate his message to be typed? I’m just imagining what it was like for the assistant to have to send out this message.
soonergrunt
@cathyx: I’ve seen the same kind of dry bureaucratic language dealing with lives before.
(Godwin Alert) in papers on display at Auschwitz, referring to ‘units’ of slave labor.
HyperIon
Also regarding “if they mess up Iraq”, who is “they”?
Gustopher
You don’t go to war with the fools you wish you had,
You go to war with the fools you have.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: That much is certain.
freelancer
@HyperIon:
and what is with this “if” shit?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@tBone:
To: tBone
From: Belafon
Re: issues w/Apocolypse
Good points, but we need to address war and death as well.
Look into doing something about horses.
And get back to me about preventing those seals from opening.
Can we stop Jesus from returning?
Maxwel
And oh by the way Doug, any ideas on how to get by the three body problem?
srv
@HyperIon:
Clearly you missed Libya’s border with Iraq.
cathyx
@soonergrunt: Yeah, well they might as well be plastic army men that he set up in his bedroom.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Chuck Butcher: As is common among that genus.
Kmeyer the lurker
Doug Feith? He sent that to DOUG FEITH???
Pooh
@Gustopher: As a commenter at Madrigal’s blog said, you go to war with the SecDef you have…
General Stuck
Shorter Rumsfeld – you can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.
coerced diplomacy chapter – neocon 101
Dennis Doubleday
If I hadn’t checked it out and found it to be authentic, I would have been almost certain that came straight from The Onion.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Stuck: Shorter Rumsfeld – you can get further with
a kind word anda gunthan you can with just a kind word.Fixed for Appropriate level of evil/stupid
PhoenixRising
Hold the phone…this is REAL?
No, seriously, Don: if the dumbest fucking guy on the planet is creating the options and you’re circulating them, WTF do we pay you for? Can’t Doug just take a meeting with Mr. Incurious on his own, thus leaving you more time for golf?
Maude
@General Stuck:
Goes right along with standing behind his desk 8 hours. That was his smarmy answer about the treatment of detainees.
Chuck Butcher
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Just saw L O’D on Last Word call A Mitchell’s interveiw with Rummy …tough(?).
I’m tougher on my fucking dog and I know what his level of IQ is.
DonkeyKong
Rummy didn’t have enough space on the memo to include “There’s mines over there, there’s mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I’ll tell ya.”
freelancer
OT – but speaking of lying fools in government…
Royston Vasey
Wow. what an amazing memo!
btw, The Twitter hash-tag for updates on the NZ disaster is #eqnz
Tony in NZ
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Well. At least we can say America survived a SoD who is dumber than Jonah Fucking Goldberg.
lllphd
@Dennis G.:
ah, so he did. didn’t see that on this particular one.
channeling emily latella: nevermind.
;-)
Maude
@Royston Vasey:
Thank you. The news says over 75 souls have perished.
bkny
@geg6: and midge decter wrote a book about it – via national review:
Lopez: What do the secretary and his wife make of his “Rumstud” status?
Decter: His wife, Joyce, and his children mainly seem to be amused by the “Rumstud” phenomenon. As for the secretary’s feeling about it, how could he (or any man) be as indifferent to it as he often pretended to be?
Lopez: What does it say about our culture today — and about American women (of all ages!) that Rumsfeld’s become a sex symbol?
Decter: What Rumsfeld’s having become an American sex symbol seems to say about American culture today is that the assault on men leveled by the women’s movement, having poisoned the normally delicate relations between men and women and thereby left a generation of younger women with a load of anxiety they are only now beginning to throw off, is happily almost over. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of the term “stud” being applied to a man who has reached the age of 70 and will not too long from now be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.
Suffern ACE
@HyperIon: I know. Only because its the type of memo that bad bosses write to cover their asses, and to receive one like that sucks donkeys.
Note: Profits are down. Have you fixed it yet? See You Soon, the Boss.
Boss’ Boss: Hey, why are profits down?
Boss: I don’t know, I told Suffern Ace to fix it. He muttered something about staff morale and quit.
El Cid
—
Also, see’s who’s on deserts. If we can get the deserts to not be so dry anymore and get some plants growing, it’d take attention away from the flareups in Iraq.
Send this along to the staff working on sharp stuff in beach sand. Nobody likes to be walking barefoot on a beach and then step on a sharp shell or stick or something. Other countries are going to cause more trouble if they can say that the country occupying Iraq can’t even keep its beaches walkable.
Bob Loblaw
It’s kind of funny that “We need to solve the Pakistan problem. And Korea doesn’t seem to be going well.” has been the ongoing US policy for decades now, though.
At least they’re honest in their incompetence, I guess. No unknown unknowns that day…
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Look, the beaches aren’t walkable and have all the sharp stuff on them so that we can fight them over there. If they could walk on the beaches, they would just sidle up to the bars and then VOOM! (Sorry, it appears that I lost control of the narrative there.)
uila
This reads like a memo from Big Stein to George Costanza.
joe from Lowell
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
You know, I was thinking that this memo reads like a Jonah Goldberg bleg.
“Hey, does anyone know about Korea and Pakistan? Things don’t seem to be going so well.
I’m working on this column to send around, so any good information would be appreciated. Oh, and Syria and Libya, too.”
Nutella
@The Dangerman:
Rumsfeld is sui generis. We hope.
joe from Lowell
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
To: Belafon
From: joe from Lowell
Subject: Issues w/ Various Elements
We need fewer oxygen and hydrogen atoms forming water, and we need it fast. If our troops keep getting wet, it could delay bringing them home from Iraq.
We also need to solve the nitrogen problem.
And plutonium doesn’t seem to be very good for people.
Are you coming up with solutions I can send around?
Thanks.
Villago Delenda Est
@cathyx:
Soldiers are like tissue paper to vile maggots like the deserting coward, Darth Cheney, and von Rumsfailed.
To be used, and then discarded.
The way you deal with these creatures is how we dealt with the German and Japanese high commands after WWII.
General Stuck
To – Feith
From – Rumsfeld
Where’s the Beef?
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
They’re as useless as the courtiers of Versailles.
Liberty60
@Suffern ACE:
FIFY
asiangrrlMN
@Villago Delenda Est:
I read that as courtesans of Versailles, whom I think were more useful.
@Royston Vasey: Thanks for checking in. Stay safe!
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: We know exactly which beaches they’ll be sending their forces to.
It will be Panama City. Or north, east, west, or south of there, on one of the continents. Intel has it that there are only 7 of those, so I don’t see what should be so hard about spotting a few boats heading toward the beach.
And since we know that in this case the unknowns are knowns, and the possibility of unknowing the unknowns before the knowns become unknown, you better get a memo on my desk by Monday on how you’re going to get the sharp stuff off all the other beaches they won’t be pulling up on.
Also, make sure they’re not going to pull up and dock to any piers. We’ve got a lot of them at the ocean and in lakes, and you know that if they don’t land at the beach we know that they’re known to do, then we should know the pier they’ll moor up to because it’s probably unknown to them, too, and we need to know that before they do.
Ed Drone
And “twit” as the species.
Ed
asiangrrlMN
@joe from Lowell:
To: joe from Lowell
From: asiangrrlMN
Re: Mysterious Ways
The tides come in….the tides go out…and fucking magnets, how do they work?
Get back to me A.S.A.P.!
@MoZeu: Sometimes, you just have to keep on walking.
/Peggy Noonan of the left.
MoZeu
@aartimus: It HAS to be. It just has to be. I refuse to believe this is real.
frosty
@geg6:
Here’s my mantra:
“When in danger or in doubt
Run in circles, scream and shout”
bkny
@Villago Delenda Est: this is a man who used a robosigner for the letters sent to the parents of dead soldiers. … until it became public:
After Outcry, Rumsfeld Says He Will Sign Condolence Letters
By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Sunday, December 19, 2004; Page A05
The Pentagon has acknowledged that Donald H. Rumsfeld did not sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq, but it said that from now on the embattled defense secretary would stop the use of signing machines and would pick up the pen himself.
frosty
@ChrisNYC:
Well, I’m late to the thread, so if anyone reads this, “arc lights” isn’t quite the right phrase. It should be “he’s arcing all the time”. An arc is a high voltage short circuit between two conductors that didn’t have enough insulation. It can pretty much burn out any associated electronics.
To bring the electronics metaphor back, Feith is a smart guy (high voltage) who cuts corners in his thinking (short circuits) and causes problems (arcs and burns out the circuit).
Royston Vasey
@Maude: 75 is now the official cost. So Far. We are expecting more.
Photos of Christchurch: Then and Now
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN:
To: SecDef
Fm: KnowTeam
We’ve checked out the tides thing. There’s a lot pointing to this “Moon” character. So far we’ve barely been able to touch it.
Our asset, who we refer to as SPACEBALLS, says he made it out of the Moon’s sphere of influence, and can personally vouch that Moon has been working on a weapons syatem known as “LaGrange” which would be pointed right at US MAIN from two launch points which are far off but keep exact aim as they don’t move.
We figure that if we can go after what it wants before it slingshots LaGrange, then we’ll be able to drag the Moon out of the shadow. Influence on big water regions should then wane within 30 days.
Allies in [REMOVED] are already set to roll with OPERATION TIDE-STOP. Small rapid deploy teams with smart buckets attack points ID’d by local friendlies outing most likely tide-affected areas.
Based on SPACEBALL’s figures, forces should be able to drive tides back to control distance within 6 hours. Once there, we don’t think maintaining a perimeter to keep tides from surging in will be difficult.
Our office estimates locals unlikely to be recruited by tidal forces to break the hold.
Suggest press conference on timepoint of pushback to weaken Moon’s hold and wait to see when mission urgency drives Moon to leave the shadow and show himself. No reports of Moon’s ability to camouflage — movements said to be trackable even under moderate cloud cover — and once Moon swings for a night attack then targeting easy for [ALLIES].
El Cid
@frosty: Only sycophants and FOXNOOZ would see him as bright as xenon arc lamps.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Also too, mining and extracting the cheese should allow the operation to pay for itself.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: Further intel should be passed to mission lead office, CO K. Canute.
frosty
@El Cid: Hey, I’m just the engineering translator here!
It was Jay Garner, whoever he is, who said that bright stuff in the comment I quoted. My understanding is that Feith is the dumbest guy in the room, amirite?
newhavenguy
Explains a lot about DoD during those years. Not even surprising anymore. The modern conservative movement is very, very good at two things only: using the Southern Strategy to win elections, and using the power to loot.
Honest, is there any evidence at all that they ever took anything else seriously? This makes Brownie for FEMA look like a good staffing choice. Not a surprise about Rummy, by any means: clearly overmatched by the job, if very good at office infighting.
Almost a microcosm of Republicans and governance.
Mike in NC
Not buying it.
I used to hear from Pentagon contacts who attended meetings with Rummy, and it was SOP that if you didn’t agree with 100% of what the old bastard was pushing, you didn’t get invited back.
Uloborus
This really says it all. Neoconservatism in action. The world is a simple place, and simple, forceful actions solve all problems.
Ash Can
Christ almighty. Never mind government policy; how does this guy manage to go a whole day without accidentally choking or suffocating himself?
Zach
This rumsfield dot com site has to be a parody site. Or maybe Rummy drafted the memo 6 days earlier and it got dated 4/7 for some reason?
Remember that he was hired for his excellence in management (pre-9/11, he was going to make the military lean and mean, remember).
Zach
Wow; clicked through to a few Rumsfeld/Feith memos and they’re all equally stupid. First two:
“I think I should try to move the ball with respect to footprint in Saudi Arabia, so we will need good talking points. We will need talking points for Jordan as well.” … and “I think we ought to put some stipulations on Syria and/or Lebanon before we allow U.S. taxpayers’ dollars to keep going to Lebanon.”
Somehow, I doubt we gave money to any country without strings attached.
Stefan
TO: Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Issues w/ Reality
Fucking magnets. How do they work?
Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. Can you explain that?
Thanks.
Zach
Oh wow – TOP TEN PRIORITIES FOR DOD FOR NEXT 6 MONTHS.
Spoiler alert; here’s numbers 9 and 10: .
Jebediah
@frosty:
Or, to make the metaphor perhaps more accurate, he’s rated for 12 VDC but insists on ramming 120 VAC through his dumb-as-a-stump brainbox.
Uloborus
I read over the rest of the memos quoted in that article, and I think if anything they showcase the OTHER Neoconservative principle:
I Am Right.
All of these memos make absolute sense if you assume that the Administration’s plan is unquestionably correct and all they need to do is get rid of obstacles slowing it down. If there is simply no possibility in your worldview that your actions are wrong, these are the kinds of memos you find yourself drafting. You want someone to give you the reasons so you can tell other people why you’re correct. You want rules bent to make everything on your schedule go faster.
Hell, this is how Cheney STILL talks. With the exasperated patience of someone who is really tired of us not understanding that everything he does is automatically right.
Royston Vasey
Donate! and here’s a NZ YouTube vid for you to enjoy. Check out our choice accents.
Beached as Bro!
Tony in NZ
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Pure. Genius. Or, per dengre, genus. Salut!
Petorado
To: Don
From: Doug
I consulted with Dick and we came up with the following answers to the problems noted in your memo:
Regarding Syria – Drop some bombs.
Libya – Drop some more bombs.
Pakistan – Drop a pallet of cash and a few bombs.
Korea – Drop the big one.
If you have any questions, drop a line to DC or me.
Your pal, Doug.
SRW1
Wasn’t Donald R. CEO at a pharma company? Anybody who has spend his working life in pharma during the period of the early 90s to the mid naughts will recognize this as the ‘Get it done’ management style by big pharma management that didn’t know much about discovery and early development (though tended to be pretty good at marketing).
Serially buying into McKinsey technology hype campaigns(combinatorial chemistry, HTS, virtual screening, in silico drug design, Human Genome project, virtual testing, metabolomics) as the solution to the ‘innovation gap’, gazillions of currency units and working hours were spend to ‘get it done’. This is not to say that these technologies do not have their place in the drug discovery business, they do. But none of them was the promised killer technology that solved everything.
I hear that the Iraq war didn’t remake the Middle East either. Goddamnit, didn’t the PNAC guys say it would!
bob h
p.s. Do we need regime change?