The Ming Report

MR. RUMSFELD’S WARS

May 7, 2004 - From the day that the President hit the Trifecta Donald Rumsfeld has been at war. Some of his wars have been conducted in the open – the war in Afghanistan; the war in Iraq – so that the American people could be witnesses to the successes and to the failures that both of these star-crossed conflicts have exhibited. But there have been other Rumsfeld wars. There is his war with Colin Powell’s State Department for control of American foreign policy. There is his war with George Tenet’s CIA for control of the shape of the information upon which the President will decide to support the policies of the Defense Department and its Office of Special Plans. There is his war with the Constitution being fought over two – and perhaps more – Americans being held in military prisons without charges or process – due or otherwise – at the pleasure of the Secretary expressed by his nominal superior, the President of the United States. And, there is his war with human dignity being fought in dank prisons and sun-baked dog pens in Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq.

For almost three years now we have fought the first of Mr. Rumsfeld’s public wars – a war in which the primary objective announced to the American people was to capture Osama Bin Laden and dismantle his Al Qaeda terrorist network. Three years of campaigning by a skeleton army and we have yet to get a glimpse of even Bin Laden’s heels. We are no closer to bringing him to justice than we were in October of 2001. That war has been a failure as each spring Rumsfeld’s Pentagon announces a new spring offensive designed to capture the Islamic Scarlet Pimpernel while the quarry announces a price on American heads.

The other of Mr. Rumsfeld’s public wars is now moving into its second year since the President announced victory last May Day. L. Paul Bremer III has been installed in Saddam Hussein’s palace and the regime has been changed. More American soldiers died in April and the first week of May than were killed in the pre-victory phase of the conflict. The sharpest battles of Mr. Rumsfeld’s war have occurred in the last six weeks. The Saddamist Revolutionary Guard commanded by a Saddamist general is in control of Fallujah and the Mehdi Army occupies and controls the Shia holy city Al Najaf. There has been no victory there.

The most outstanding of Mr. Rumsfeld’s victories has been kept close and secret until last week. His campaign against the human dignity of internees in the quest for “actionable intelligence” has been singularly successful though the quality and accuracy of the intelligence obtained has been uneven and unreliable. Mr. Rumsfeld’s policy of placing internees under “stress and distress” has been implemented in shipping containers sitting in the sun at Bagram Air Base in; in the dog pens of Camp Delta in Cuba; and in the blood splattered cells of Tier 1 in Abu Ghraib prison.

Just a few minutes ago Secretary Rumsfeld apologized to the victims of the inhumane treatment meted out to Iraqi internees in pursuit of his policy. He called for them to be compensated and he vowed that those responsible would be dealt with. There was no recognition in his introductory remarks to the Senate Military Affairs committee that it was his own policy of applying coercive stress and duress in the course of interrogations that has been the ultimate cause of the Abu Ghraib outrages. Rather than facing that reality he is intent on limiting responsibility to the lowest level possible. The ultimate reality is that the buck doesn’t stop there. The real problem is structural and it starts at the top of the pyramid. That is where Donald Rumsfeld’s desk sits and that is where Mr. Rumsfeld’s Wars have been lost.