Reports are that Rummy is resigning and it will be announced at the Bush presser.

New threadworthy.

Also, it's about fucking time.

^^Werd.

[smilie=llama_banan:

I was pleased to see them trot out a reasonable candidate for replacement. Could the reality-based community have finally penetrated the cone of hubris around the white house? This is a big step up from harriet miers and john bolton when it comes to bush nominees.

the democrats freed the terrorists.
http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/9830/sadambreaksouthx3.gif

vote replublican and bring hope back to our hearts.

Clinton summarized the Republican dogma best:

RmiHUkrFuws

As for Bob Gates, Rumsfeld's successor, here's what he wrote before 9/11, speaking as a former public official who thought he wasn't going back into politics anytime soon:


Opinion: What War Looks Like Now

By ROBERT M. GATES

After the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the World Trade Center, and the bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1995 and 1996, Americans must face the reality that more such attacks are inevitable, perhaps using weapons of even more terrifying power.

Strengthening protection of our embassies and other official sites is important, and Americans owe it to our fellow citizens who represent us abroad to give this effort priority. But our people and our Government must accept another reality: as potential official American targets are "hardened," terrorists will simply turn to non-official soft targets -- businesses, schools, tourists and so on. We can perhaps channel the threat away from the United States Government, but not away from Americans.

So, what then is to be done about terrorism? There is certainly no shortage of opinions on this score. Some of the advice is wise counsel, and some of it is nonsense. I would count as nonsense suggestions from various quarters in recent days that we lift the ban on assassinating our enemies.

How, in this most politically open society in the world, can anyone consider choosing a weapon against which we are the most vulnerable in the world? There are other reasons not to go down this path, from the mundane (when last we tried assassinations, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, we didn't seem to be very good at it) to the philosophical (the assassin's bullet seems a singularly inappropriate instrument of foreign policy for the world's greatest democracy).

More realistically, and helpfully, there have been a number of suggestions for improvements in intelligence and law enforcement counterterrorism capabilities. No doubt, some ideas in these arenas have merit, and more resources certainly can be used to pay for reward money, improved clandestine human intelligence, and so on.

But, in truth, Americans can take pride in already existing C.I.A. and F.B.I. counterterrorism capabilities. Indeed, there have been important pre-emptive and law enforcement strikes against terrorists over the past 15 years.

No, the great deficiency in American counterterrorism efforts in the summer of 1998 is not strictures against assassination, nor inadequacies in intelligence and law enforcement. The deficiency is political and strategic. It is in the perpetuation of myth and deception and spin by both the executive and legislative branches of our government, by both political parties, who seem unable to level with the American people.

Here are some realities the Government does not acknowledge. Most of our counterterrorism successes are against loners (like the gunman who killed two people outside the C.I.A.'s headquarters in 1993) or against foot soldiers of larger terrorist organizations.

Our failures -- for example, to get the Pan Am 103 bombers out of Libya to stand trial, or to get more information out of the Saudi Government about the 1995 and 1996 bombings -- are the result of conscious but unspoken Government decisions about political priorities.

To get the Pan Am 103 bombers out of Libya would require an ultimatum to the Libyan Government that the two be turned over to a court in England or Scotland within a short time or our military would, step by step, day by day, turn Libya's military establishment and then its oil industry into a smoldering ruin. Of course, we would be alone, acting unilaterally, and in the face of near-unanimous international obloquy.

Getting the Saudis to tell us what they probably know about foreign responsibility for the bombings in Riyadh and Dhahran would require playing very high economic, political and security cards -- a massive use of leverage -- that would have longlasting and negative consequences for the American-Saudi relationship and our presence in the Persian Gulf. In both cases, our Government, perhaps wisely, has chosen not to act in such a blunt manner.

So, the first reality about our counterterrorism policy is that we face conflicting national priorities. The politically difficult and, indeed, unspeakable issue is whether the level of American casualties from terrorism is acceptable to our Government compared with the political, security and economic consequences of a far more militant approach to dealing with terrorism.

Another unacknowledged and unpleasant reality is that a more militant approach toward terrorism would, in virtually all cases, require us to act violently and alone. No other power will join us in a crusade against terrorism -- in fact, some "friendly" governments protect their countries against terrorism by cutting deals with the groups, allowing them operational freedom.

No political or economic sanctions would work. Only violence. Only alone. And only if we can figure out how and against whom to retaliate.

A third reality is that retributive violence, no matter how massive, almost inevitably begets more violence against us in response. Conventional wisdom holds that President Ronald Reagan's attack on Libya in 1986 chastened Muammar el-Qaddafi and essentially ended Libyan terrorism.

Not true. Many experts believe that the Libyan bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988 was, in fact, in retaliation for the 1986 bombing attack on Libya, and that there were probably other acts of Libyan terrorism after 1986.

There is no quick, clean or conclusive end to retribution against terrorists. The war is the quintessential "long, twilight struggle," with limited casualties on the terrorists' side, occasional appalling casualties on our side, and countless victims caught in between, as we have seen in Africa.

The painful question facing the American people and the American Government today -- as in the mid-1980's -- is whether to make a war against terrorism our highest priority in foreign policy. A war in which broader American political, economic and security interests would be sacrificed to our own jihad, or holy war, against terrorists.

This, then, brings us to the final reality of how Americans must respond to terrorist acts as we have seen in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Tanzania. We will never prevent all -- or even most -- such acts. In the world of real choices, we can protect ourselves better. We can bring some terrorists to justice. But, above all, we can pursue policies and strategies that in the long term weaken terrorism's roots.

We can pursue a peace in the Middle East that does not kowtow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's obstructionism and betrayal of Yitzhak Rabin's legacy. We can carefully pursue a nascent dialogue with President Mohammad Khatami of Iran and not play into the hands of his militant domestic adversaries (who may see terrorism against us as hitting two birds with one stone).

We can promote human rights and political freedom in the Middle East as we did in the Soviet Union and try to do now in Asia. We can use force against the sponsors of terrorism, whether governments or groups, or, in the case of individuals, we can arrest and try them to show that our reach is, in fact, as long as our memory. And to show that those who send would-be martyrs to attack us do themselves invite martyrdom -- or American jail.

This mix of force and diplomacy, this reliance on patience and planning, the painful realization of more casualties to come, is not satisfying emotionally. It does not quench the thirst for revenge or justice; it does not offer beguilingly simple answers to complex problems and difficult choices. In reality, though, it is the only sustainable course.

But even this approach to dealing with terrorism cannot be sustained absent a broader American strategy for dealing with the world beyond our borders. No successful counterterrorism strategy is possible unless our leaders accept that the United States cannot insulate itself from the rest of humankind, cannot treat the rest of the world as a part-time interest or a political football, and cannot abdicate the responsibilities and costs and sacrifices of global leadership. Republicans and Democrats alike must stop hiding behind public opinion polls that purport to show that Americans don't like foreign commitments, especially those possibly involving sacrifice. Americans in this century rarely have enthusiastically accepted international commitments.

It has required courageous and farsighted leadership in Washington -- above all from the President, but with Congressional support -- to persuade Americans of the need to lead and to protect our interests around the world, even knowing that the cost in blood and treasure may at times be high. Such leadership has been sadly lacking in recent years at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Terrorism against Americans will be a fixture of our world for a long time.

Real leadership in Washington would help Americans understand the realities of this protracted war and the importance of consistent American leadership and involvement in a world caught up in revolutionary change.

Real leadership -- Republican and Democratic -- would speak honestly to the American people, without spin or cant or partisanship, about the realities of a world we dominate but do not control.

Robert M. Gates, a career intelligence officer, served on the National
Security Council staff under four Presidents and was Director of Central
Intelligence under President George Bush.

Sunday, August 16, 1998
Copyright 1998 The New York Times

Here's some exerpts from Rummy's going away speeches:
c5P6MLiKEJI
I didn't know the dude was into handjobs.

That's a pretty funny twist on an old gag.