Donald Rumsfeld On What Network And Said What? "……Trained Ape?"

The emergence of a past seemingly long forgot!

How many years and months was the US spared the inane and ridiculous appearances of former Bush Administration officials spewing pure drivel for ratings hungry media. They also spew to a public that has proven it too soon forgets its past. A public that may not mind the damnation of repeating that past.

The Bush Administration left the nation so deep in the doldrums of an economic and international abyss, history has already started its legacy development. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, Rove et al. have a place in our lives that should be quarantined into the recesses of our minds never to be allowed to across our brain Cortex. 

The GOP and RNC conducted national events over a six-year period without appearances from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. During the 2012 RNC Convention Rice was paraded out as a “trophy” to spew “lockstep” rhetoric. Why the 2014 visuals accompanied by utterance nonsense? His most recent comments will be considered racist by many people. 

The Bush Administration ghosts.

Bush starts to make appearances. Cheney is actually allowed to speak via Fox News and certain Sunday Morning (GOP leaning) news shows. Hosts actually sit across from Cheney and ask questions, then sit back while Cheney spews pure jingoist garbage from the corner of his crooked mouth. Rice has crawled into the public eye since the RNC Convention and with each statement makes a complete fool of herself.  

Imagine this as Rice contemplated Putin’s invasion of Crimea.

Condi Rice: The U.S. Can’t Step Back And Let Others Lead

If I may posit.  No one from the Bush Administration should be given a platform to criticize the very president who has worked tirelessly to clean-up the utter mess they left for us all.  As politics has sallied over time, we cannot expect republicans to follow the old adage taught to me at a very young age.

“A fool will never be discovered a fool if he keeps his mouth closed.” 

Since, politics forces the fools upon us, I cannot help but lay blame to ratings seeking media.  

Think for a moment. Have we grown to the point our memory is so short and shallow we forget the dark ages of the Bush years?  On what basis can media simply pluck the non-credible from the shadows of the shamed, to speak on camera and microphone? Rice spoke of “allowing others to lead.” How about the leadership from the Bush cabinet? Leadership that included outing an active CIA Agent.

Rumsfeld now ventures into criticism of President Obama and he does so with analogy that some will be label racist.

After The Raw Story embed and advertisement,  catch my close.

The Raw Story

Read more after the break below

Donald Rumsfeld: U.S. diplomacy would be better if Obama was a ‘trained ape’ (via Raw Story )

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Monday blasted President Barack Obama’s diplomacy, saying a “trained ape” could do a better job. In an interview with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, Rumsfeld complained that relations with…

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Diplomacy; “trained ape” 

OK, so a “trained ape” could do a better job of International diplomacy! Seriously, he goes there? From a man who’s would send Bush Iraq War memos laced with quoted Scripture? He has the temerity to reference Obama’s diplomacy while some of us clearly remember this….

George Bush got memos from Rumsfeld that used Scripture to push Iraq war

 

We understand the shallowness of media that broadcast or write about comments from Rumsfeld. We can only hope the American public is far beyond Fox News propaganda from the Right and well beyond thinking media today is about delivery of news. Media, both Left and Right, has metastasized into communication wings for their respective ideology.

The Johnson Tapes..Nixon’s Treachery

Richard M. Nixon, harbinger of things to come!

While baby boomers have for decades  wondered about how our leaders perpetrated the Viet Nam War, I must admit the recent publication and release of President Johnson’s (LBJ) Oval Office tapes has provided an official and formal ‘jaw-dropper’. The BBC has published (and released) yet another legacy destroying expose on Richard Nixon.  

I could not help but wonder, as I listened to the short segment with LBJ speaking about Nixon.  I wondered how so many people actually cast votes and contribute money to the GOP. The party has dissolved into a shameful shell of a party long dead, but not yet buried.  It seems over the past two weeks revelations about political and social malfeasance from the Right have sprung-up like irritating dandelions in a well manicured lawn. My wonderment was heightened by exhibitions of pure racism and unfair treatment of  a visitor at the annual GOP CPAC “ooze”, Christe’s use of the word “boy” in yet another angst filled tirade for the rotund governor, and the release of the Iraq War Reconstruction SIGIR study. History will also chronicle the Showtime Dick Cheney special replete with “If I had to do it all over, I would not change a thing.” How can people continue to support a party that is so riddled with the cancers of defeat, it appears to soak-up chemo treatments with ongoing exhibitions of the unbelievable? And, when history reaches from the ages to deliver such lessons the wonderment becomes all the more intriguing (and yes rewarding).  

History is a phenomena that never fails to intrigue.  What we do not know can be psychological shattering once we come to “know”. I find myself feeling angry and manipulated as I come to “know”.  If you do not feel same, you might want to consider counseling.

I wrote earlier the week about how powerful men use us (common folk) like chess pieces. The powerful maneuver us like pawns in games that do little more than advance their agendas. Or, they play the game for iniquitous satisfaction of their ego, paradigm, beliefs, and elitist desires.

The revelations of Nixon’s treasonous malfeasance provides yet another view of Republican governance, while in some way reminding of things to come with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Tenet/Powell. 

             
We are going to post a 1:47 minute excerpt from a 58 minute portion of one of LBJ’s comments about politics and Nixon.   we will post more below as the story takes a fascinating turn and may involve monitoring a senior GOP adviser. Johnson mentions possible involvement the adviser he refers to as a bit of a looker in this MSNBC segment . 

The British Broadcast Company (DURATION: 01:47)

“If it was made public, it would rock the nation” 

How Richard Nixon destabilised the Vietnamese peace talks in 1968 to enhance his chances of victory in that year’s American Election. 

Using newly released White House recordings, David Taylor completes an investigation begun by his colleague Charles Wheeler into the extraordinary actions of Richard Nixon as he attempted to sabotage the Peace Talks over the Vietnam war in 1968.

Here we offer the full 58 minute audio. You will be linked to a page that will only require a simple click of an icon.  The page also allows listening to individual clips vs. the entire 58 minute release.  Note: it is not the easiest audio to understand unless you have perfect hearing ability and the opportunity to crank up the volume.

The revelations are not new.  As you have heard and observed in the video above, the story went silent in the 1990s. 

The BBC News Magazine story is linked here. (good read)

The Daily Kos provides a comprehensive treatise on the issue. 

Ngô Đình Diệm
President of the Republic of Vietnam

Hubris: Marketing the Iraq War

The worse in US History

The following hour long segment from last Monday Evening’s Rachel Maddow Show is an item worthy of archive. The television documentary is based on a book that Maddow will introduce minutes after starting the segment.

MSNBC has posted the documentary in six (6) parts. We are embedding the Introduction, Part 1 and Part 2. 

The documentary is good to say the least   As I watched I thought long and hard about a few things.  the easy one, Why not make a full two hour documentary. Apparently,  people are writing (social media)  they wanted much more, “It was too short.”  The interest speaks to the seriousness of the misguided US policy and I suspect the interest crosses political lines.  

Another area of concern, the length of time it took for some to speak openly and honestly.  Honestly?  As I watched Maddow’s opening remarks I felt someone had the smarts (probably the book authors) to open the work with comment about another time in US History when we were duped into war.  Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident catapulted the US into Viet Nam and a resultant 55,000 dead US troops, hundreds of thousands maimed or disabled, and international embarrassment second to no other.  

While I knew that Colin Powell was actively involved in selling the war to the US public,  I assumed he was far more out of the know than the documentary shows.  He caved to pressure, went along with the charade and eventually resigned the office. A resignation during the run-up to the war would have provided me with a greater respect for the man.  He resigned after the deeds were done and well after no WMD was found in Iraq.  He knew the prospect of no WMD was a reality. 

The final concern, after watching the documentary, why no prosecutions. Why no investigation of authorization to commit torture?

We did not learn from the past via the Gulf of Tonkin, and we relived the past in Iraq.   

WATCH: ‘Hubris’ documentary

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reports on how the Bush administration viewed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as an opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from power in part one of Hubris.     In addition to watching the full documentary, you can read more about the Bush administration’s marketing of a war they had already decided to wage; take a look at Rumsfeld’s secret documents; and read an interview with the co-author of “Hubris”: he talks about torture, secrets, and what we still don’t know.

Part 2:

View more Part 3:

So soon America forgets! Some of the very same characters who served Bush in Iraq were active in the Romney campaign. And, 47% of you voted Romney/Ryan.