Tag: Donald Rumsfeld

26 January 1998

Posted on by Featherproof Books

 

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC)—founded by, amongst others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Armitage, and Scooter Libby (all future Bush administration principals and officials)— releases its first public letter where it demands that President Clinton undertake the “removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime” in Iraq, labeling containment “dangerously inadequate.”

The Project for a New American Century is later labeled “neocon” and influential in setting up a war with Saddam Hussein but the Clinton administration started down this path to a final showdown, both overstating the WMD threat and declaring that regime change was the only path to normalization of relations.

10 January 2001

Posted on by William Arkin

 

President-elect George W. Bush is briefed in the famous and highly secure JCS “tank” at the Pentagon—on the national security situation and the immediate threats ahead.

The focus is on the immediate threat from Iraq, the absence of U.N. inspectors, the unravelling of international sanctions, the continued build-up of weapons of mass destruction, the hardening of Iraq’s air defense and communications infrastructure with buried fiber optics, Iraqi relations with terrorists, and Saddam’s Hussein’s human rights record. It is a bracing and single-minded presentation. In other words, Iraq wasn’t just some concoction of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. It was the number one threat as conceived by the Pentagon.

9 January 2001

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The Washington Post fawns over Rumsfeld’s Rules and America is introduced to the “known unknowns” and other useless observations from the new secretary of defense: hundreds of pithy, compelling, and often humorous observations about leadership, business, and life.

The rules later earned praise from the Wall Street Journal as “required reading,” and from the New York Times which said: “Rumsfeld’s Rules can be profitably read in any organization. … The best reading, though, are his sprightly tips on inoculating oneself against that dread White House disease, the inflated ego.”

The mainstream media would sour on Rumsfeld in the first few months of the Bush administration, as he picked fights with the brass and controlled everything, flooding the defense establishment with his famous “snowflakes”—observations, questions, orders, the pre-Tweeting tweets of a narcissist. By the time 9/11 came about, Rumsfeld’s stock was in the toilet, until all of a sudden the same voices started to lavish praise on the “wartime” Rumsfeld, the wise man who would defeat terrorism (and Saddam Hussein) and bring peace to the land. We’re still fighting, 20 years later.

27 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Army Gen. Peter Jan Schoomaker

 

Army Gen. Peter Jan Schoomaker retires as SOCOM commander, replaced by Air Force Gen. Charles Holland.

At Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Schoomaker had replaced Gen. Henry (“Hugh”) Shelton, who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had previously served as the commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from July 1994 to August 1996, followed by command of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

A known conservative and aggressive special operations man, Schoomaker wanted to take action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan but was never able to gain approval.

After 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld found Gen. Holland way too passive and doctrinaire in employing America’s secret forces in Afghanistan. Though he also had a prodigious special operations background (and had served as deputy commanding general of JSOC), Rumsfeld iced him out, maybe as well because he hadn’t appointed him.

From the sidelines, Schoomaker—now a defense contractor—kibbitzed on tactics and strategy for the burgeoning global war on terror and the increased use of special operations. On August 1, 2003, Rumsfeld brought Schoomaker out of retirement to be the 35th chief of staff of the Army and a close advisor.