Rumsfeld

defended by rivkin

An admission of colossal failure’: US dropped record number of bombs on Afghanistan in 2019Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/calls-intensify-for-hearings-on-us-officials-who-lied-to-american-people-about-endless-afghan-war-lets-bring-rumsfeld-in

no lnx

Calls intensify for hearings on US officials who lied to American people about endless Afghan War: ‘Let’s bring Rumsfeld in’

Why the Afghanistan papers shows we never learned Noam Chomsky’s lesson from VietnamVijay Prashad / Independent Media Inst

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rummy?

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an 1219

America’s Afghanistan anti-drug boondoggle nears the $9 Billion markPhillip Smith / Independent Media inst

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intercept tillman cover up fake news:

...Working tirelessly for years in the evenings, Mary Tillman pieced together what happened to her son.

“They were now left with the task of briefing our family and answering our questions,” Kevin went on to say. “With any luck, our family would sink quietly into our grief, and the whole unsavory episode would be swept under the rug. However, they miscalculated our family’s reaction. Through the amazing strength and perseverance of my mother, the most amazing woman on earth, our family has managed to have multiple investigations conducted. However, while each investigation gathered more information, the mountain of evidence was never used to arrive at an honest or even sensible conclusion.” Working tirelessly for years in the evenings, after coming home from her job as a special education teacher, Mary Tillman pieced together what happened to her son, pouring the shocking findings into her book. “They attached themselves to his virtue and then threw him under the bus,” she told Sports Illustrated. “They had no regard for him as a person. He’d hate to be used for a lie. I don’t care if they put a bullet through my head in the middle of the night. I’m not stopping.”

Tillman’s mother laid much of the blame for the cover-up at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s secretary of defense at the time. Rumsfeld had taken an early interest in the compelling story of the young football star who became an Army Ranger. In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Mary explained that Rumsfeld “had written Pat a letter when he enlisted, thanking him for enlisting, so Pat was in his radar.” Tillman said it was “ludicrous to think” that Rumsfeld, a well-known micromanager with a keen interest in special operations units, wouldn’t have been immediately notified of her son’s fratricide. “Heads would have rolled if they didn’t tell Rumsfeld,” she said.

“I don’t recall when I was told and I don’t recall who told me,” Rumsfeld had said of the episode before Congress in 2007. “I know that I would not engage in a cover-up.”

WASHINGTON - AUGUST 01:  Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the combat fratricide of NFL star and US Army Ranger Pat Tillman on Capitol Hill August 1, 2007 in Washington, DC. The hearing was titled "The Tillman Fratricide: What the Leadership of the Defense Department Knew." Tillman's family was originally told that he was killed by the enemy during combat in Afghanistan. It was later revealed that he was killed in a "friendly-fire" accident by his fellow Rangers.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the combat fratricide of Pat Tillman, on Aug. 1, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

RUMSFELD WASN’T THE ONLY senior Pentagon figure involved in the events following Tillman’s death. At the time, the now-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal headed the famed Joint Special Operations Command, running the most secretive Pentagon’s efforts in Afghanistan — including Tillman’s Army Rangers platoon. Seven days after Tillman was killed, amid the mounting evidence of fratricide, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command as a heads-up to the president and other senior officials who might make speeches about the incident.

“I felt it was essential you receive this information as soon as we detected it,” McChrystal wrote, “in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country’s leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public.”

The “if” at the end of the general’s statement was particularly concerning to the Tillman family, in part because subsequent investigations revealed that McChrystal was well-aware of the fact that Tillman’s death was a case of fratricide when he sent the memo. Krakauer, in his book, described McChrystal going to “extraordinary lengths to prevent the Tillman family from learning the truth about how Pat died.” Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2009, McChrystal told lawmakers, “We failed the family.” He added, “It was not intentional.”...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/11/new_ruling_donald_rumsfeld_can_t_be_sued_for_torture.html

Why Donald Rumsfeld Can’t Be Sued for Torture

His latest and biggest court victory.

no lnx

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not be sued by two U.S. citizens who were tortured by members of the military.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which issued the decision, is the third appeals court to let Rumsfeld off the hook legally. But the 7th Circuit decision goes further than the others. By a vote of 7-4, its judges said that no member of our military—presumably even one who personally inflicts torture—can be sued for his related conduct in office.

The facts are a case study in system failure. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were Americans working for a private security firm in Iraq.When Vance became suspicious that hisemployer was selling weapons to groups hostile to the United States, he went to the FBI. Vance and Ertel were then fingered as arms dealers. Military personnel arrested them in 2006 and held them for several weeks.

According to the complaint, Vance and Ertel were held in solitary confinement and subjected to violence, sleep deprivation, extremes of temperature and sound, denial of food, water, and medical care, and other abuses. Though the Army Field Manual (and four judges) calls this torture, the majority opinion prefers the euphemism “harsh interrogation techniques.”

The majority and the dissents clashed over military accountability and the role of the judiciary. The starting point for both sides is Bivens, a 1971 Supreme Court case that allows a victim of a constitutional violation to sue a responsible federal officer for damages when no other law or court ruling gives them an entry into court. The majority argued that the Supreme Court has spent the last three decades reining in Bivens, and it thus cannot sanction Vance and Ertel’s “novel damages remedy” against military personnel. The dissenters attacked this entire mode of analysis: It is incorrect to say that Vance and Ertel are asking the court to create a right to seek damages, they argued, because Bivens already provides it.

The majority also read Supreme Court precedent to say that civilian courts should not “interfere with the military chain of command” without guidance from Congress. And here, Congress has addressed the rights of detainees in laws such as the Torture Victim Protection Act and has chosen not to provide for damages against military personnel. End of story. The dissenters respond by accusing the majority of converting a narrow rule—one that prevents military personnel from suing for injuries related to their service—into a sweeping rule that shields the military entirely from lawsuits by civilians. One telling and troubling point they make: In the 7th Circuit now (Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin), a victim of torture by a foreign militarywho finds his torturer in the United States has a remedy, but a U.S. citizen who is tortured by his own military does not.   

Katie Mesner-Hage is a recent graduate of Yale Law School.

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Room for Debate

A NEW YORK TIMES BLOG

https://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/:{2009:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/04/16/the-memos-torture-redefined

The Memos: Torture Redefined

BY THE EDITORS  APRIL 16, 2009 8:00 PM April 16, 2009 8:00 pm

CIA secret memos A screen shot of page 2 of the Aug. 1, 2002, secret memo that details interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency. To see the four memos released by the Justice Department on Thursday, go here.

Updated, Apr. 20, 10:55 a.m. | Douglas W. Kmiec, who was head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, offers his view.

Updated, Apr. 17, 1:00 p.m. | Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution joins our discussion.

Updated, Apr. 17, 9:20 a.m. | We’ve updated this forum with commentary from David B. Rivkin, a lawyer and former official in the administration of George H.W. Bush.

The Justice Department on Thursday released four detailed memos, issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005, describing and approving the use of harsh interrogation techniques by the Central Intelligence Agency. President Obama said that while these techniques “undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer,” the C.I.A. operatives who relied on the legal advice would not be subject to prosecution.

We’re asking several legal and national security experts for their reaction to these memos and whether they think President Obama’s call for moving on from this chapter is the right decision.

Douglas W. Kmiec, legal adviser in Reagan administration

David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center

Kori Schake, United States Military Academy

Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights

David B. Rivkin, lawyer

Kenneth Anderson, law professor, American University

Obama’s Realism

Douglas W. Kmiec

Douglas W. Kmiec is a law professor at Pepperdine University. He was a head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

President Barack Obama deserves great credit for releasing these memos, though except for the listing of tortures — and that is what they are — the tortuous reasoning that yielded these had already been known.

My sense is that in 2002, there was a confluence of genuine fear of a follow-on attack far more devastating than 9/11; a president ill-prepared for the threat with respect to intelligence in every sense of the word; and Justice Department personnel who were either too young to have perspective, too academic to have practical wisdom, or too political to be capable of judgment.

Many, I know, wish to prosecute for war crime, and perhaps Spain still will. I doubt given the mental requirements for criminal penalty such would be successful, and I admire President Obama, yet anew, for taking the political heat from his left perimeter for grasping the futility of such prosecution.

It would be worthwhile to have a Nuremberg-style citizen-conducted ethics inquiry.

That said, it would be worthwhile to have a Nuremberg-style citizen-conducted ethics inquiry in which all of the opinion writers — and the opinion demanders in the Pentagon and former White House — would be required to self-critique why the Nation they most assuredly would say they love is today embarrassed if not appalled by what was authorized. The point of the exercise would be “looking forward” as President Obama properly desires, but in a manner that would be reminded out of the protagonists own attempts at explanation, why we cannot forget, and in the course of it all, to ensure that those presently exercising power, or those to come after, do not self-delude themselves into thinking it could not involve them or repeat.

Macabre and Excruciating

David D. Cole

David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is the author, most recently, of “Justice At War: The Men and Ideas That Shaped America’s ‘War on Terror.'”

The four legal memos released by the Obama administration on Thursday confirm in excruciating detail that the Bush administration employed twisted and macabre legal reasoning to authorize the unspeakable – the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of human beings.

The memos’ matter-of-fact clinical descriptions belie the harsh tactics to which they gave a green light. They set the C.I.A. loose to slam suspects’ heads into walls up to 30 times in a row, to deprive suspects of sleep for more than a week straight, to confine them to small dark boxes for hours at a time, to slap them repeatedly in the face and abdomen, and to suffocate them with water to induce the perception that they are drowning.

Mr. Obama’s refusal to hold accountable those responsible for the wrongs so evident from the memos is unacceptable.

A child would recognize these tactics as cruel and inhumane. The United States itself treated waterboarding as torture when the Japanese used it against our troops in World War II. Yet through pages and pages of dense legal reasoning, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers somehow reach the conclusion that these tactics, even when employed in combination and over a 30-day period, are not torture, and not even cruel, inhuman, or degrading.

President Obama should be commended for releasing these memos. But his simultaneous assertion that he will not seek to hold accountable those responsible for the wrongs so evident on the memos’ face is unacceptable. The line C.I.A. agents are not, however, the most culpable. Rather, it is the lawyers and high-level government officials who set this scheme in motion and made it possible. These documents are irrefutable evidence that government officials, including lawyers employed in the Office of Legal Counsel, a Justice Department office meant to serve as the “constitutional conscience” of the Executive Branch, set out to manipulate the law to reach repugnant, illegal results that contravene the very ideals President Obama says must not be sacrificed.

It is not enough to say that when we have a president who does not believe in cruel and inhuman treatment and torture, the United States will not engage in such practices – while leaving open the possibility that if we again elect a president who does believe in such practices, they can be revived as a policy option. We must formally acknowledge that what was done was wrong, indeed criminal. At the very least, a credible independent investigation must be undertaken. The Convention Against Torture, which we have signed and ratified, demands nothing less wherever there is any evidence that persons within our jurisdiction inflicted cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment on another human being. These memos are that evidence.

Prosecution Would Be Dangerous

Kori Schake

Kori Schake, a former national security adviser on defense issues to President George W. Bush, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of international security studies at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

It seems to me that President Obama hit the balance about right in rejecting the use of those techniques and releasing the information, but acknowledging that the intelligence community was working on a very difficult problem and conducting the interrogations in good faith with the legal advice they were receiving.

What struck me most about the memos was that as late as August 2002, C.I.A. officials believed they were hearing “chatter” of the level and kind that proceeded the September 11th attacks. At that time, the country was still reeling from those attacks. The agency believed it had in custody enemies planning catastrophic terrorist attacks against our country and were urgently seeking information. The C.I.A. sought legal counsel and complied with the advice. Subjecting people to prosecution under those circumstances would be a dangerous politicization of difficult choices made by those serving our country.

Granting Immunity Makes Obama Complicit

Michael Ratner

Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of “The Prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.”

Yes, it is good that President Obama ordered the release of four more of the torture memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. The inhuman interrogation techniques those memos authorized which include waterboarding, walling (in which a person is slammed against a wall), confinement in a small box and sleep deprivation clearly constitute torture and other crimes under U.S. law. There is nothing abstract about the techniques: they are initially focused on one individual and even discuss his psychological weakness in language similar to the novel 1984 — although in this case, it’s bugs, not rats.

Since when did legal advice make torture into a lawful and permissible interrogation technique?

Yet President Obama goes out of his way to praise those who engaged in these unlawful practices and assures them they will not be prosecuted. In part, he asserts that the C.I.A. personnel were following, in good faith, legal advice. But since when did legal advice make torture into a lawful and permissible interrogation technique?

Torture is torture and all the legal window dressing in the world cannot hide its essence: the infliction of pain and suffering on human beings. If legal advice can protect torturers, no official anywhere can ever be prosecuted. Legal advice then becomes a get out-of-jail free card and will be employed by every petty dictatorship to protect its abusers.

In making the decision not to prosecute, President Obama is acting as jury, judge and prosecutor. It is not his decision to make. Whether or not to prosecute law breakers is not a political decision. Laws were broken and crimes were committed. If we are truly a nation of laws as he is fond of saying, a prosecutor needs to be appointed and the decisions regarding the guilt of those involved in the torture program should be decided in a court of law.

Prosecuting those involved in the torture program, particularly the officials who conceived, authorized and ordered the torture program is not “retribution” or “laying blame for the past” as President Obama says. It is about insuring that we will not again become a nation that employs in torture. The prohibition on torture should not be dependent on who is president or on the stroke of a pen. We prosecute those who break laws to deter lawbreaking. President Obama, by granting impunity to torturers, becomes complicit with their actions. History will not judge him kindly.

No Harm, No Torture

David B. Rivkin

David B. Rivkin, a lawyer in Washington, was counsel of the President’s Council on Competitiveness at the White House under George H.W. Bush.

The release of these memos comes at a high price. By describing in great detail the most assertive set of interrogation techniques, that the United States has ever used — having determined them after a great deal of reflection and analysis to be legal — we have rendered them essentially unusable in the future. This is precisely because these techniques were not torture, did not feature brute force and worked primarily because of their psychological dimension. Now, having been exposed, these techniques would be studied by our enemies, who will then train their operatives to withstand them.

However, while this disclosure came at a great price, it also provides a great benefit. The memos are well-written, and feature careful and nuanced legal analysis. They weave together the facts and the law. They are grounded in real world experience, because nine out of 10 techniques, used against high-value detainees, were also used over a period of many years in SERE training courses, with thousands and thousands of American participants.

This data is analyzed in great detail to establish that the use of these techniques does not inflict either physical or psychological damage. The conclusions the memos reach — that the specific interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. did not constitute torture — are eminently reasonable. To any fair-minded observer, these documents definitively establish that the Bush administration did not engage in torture. They go a long way toward rebutting shrill and unfair attacks on the integrity of Bush administration officials, and, more generally, on America’s honor.

fdn iwf

http://conservativetransparency.org/donor/joyce-and-donald-rumsfeld-foundation/

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off bs

https://www.rumsfeldfoundation.org/

Lawrence Di Rita works for Bank of America. He is responsible for CEO communications, the company's national media relations, and communications for the legal /compliance/ regulatory groups, and marketing/corporate affairs. Mr. Di Rita joined Bank of America after more than 25 years of public service.

From 2001-2006, he was Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. While at the Pentagon, he also served as head of the office of Public Affairs and as Defense Department spokesman. From 1996-2001, Mr. Di Rita was Legislative Director, then Chief of Staff for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. In 1995-1996, he was Policy Director of the Phil Gramm for President campaign.

Between 1980 and 1993, Mr. Di Rita was a U.S. naval officer, with various seagoing and shore-based assignments in the United States and Japan, where he and his family lived from 1981-1985. His last active duty assignment from 1991-1993 was as a politico-military planner on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After his military service,

Mr. Di Rita spent two years as Deputy Director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies atThe Heritage Foundation,a think-tank in Washington, D.C. Mr. Di Rita has a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy and a Master of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University.

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fredrick douglass house

tech central station

sweetner

Baker & Hosteler Background

In Michigan v. EPA in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 5-4 vote struck down the EPA's carefully crafted rules to limit the emission of mercury and other toxic pollutants from oil and coal power plants, David B. Rivkin Jr. of Baker & Hostetler represented the Cato Institute, which in turn has received millions from energy interests including the David H. Koch Foundation and ExxonMobil. Rivkin worked in the Reagan Justice Department and was the associate general counsel at the Department of Energy under George H. W. Bush. More recently, he has been part of the legal effort to strike down Obamacare and also has defeated lawsuits aimed at holding former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally liable for alleged torture in Iraq.

Rivkin also argued the cause for petitioner State of Texas in Texas v. EPA, which was decided in July 2013. The U.S. Court of Appeals slapped down Texas’ attempt to block the EPA from controlling the state’s system for issuing permits to power plants.

doc

newest 2014 on rumy rumsfeld

slate: ...In a devastating moment near the end of The Fog of War, McNamara all but admits that some of his actions in Vietnam constituted war crimes. It’s a scene that could be construed as a kind of redemption, though Morris himself has rejected the notion that his job was to wring an apology out of McNamara: “I’m a Jew from Long Island, not a Catholic priest hearing confession.” At any rate, the then 85-year-old McNamara’s disclosure is a moment of introspection and self-scrutiny, a morally gratifying surprise twist that no doubt helped secure that film its Best Documentary Oscar for 2004.* The Unknown Known contains no such humanist satisfactions. Rumsfeld, now 81, remains chipper, opaque, and chillingly assured of the rightness of even the administration’s most lamentable choices.*...

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Aspartame is not food. It’s defined as [14] a synthetic compound of two amino acids (l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine o-methyl ester). The compound was discovered accidentally in 1965, by James M. Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle Company. Schlatter was testing an anti-ulcer drug. When he licked his finger and discovered that his concoction tasted sweet, the market for artificial sweeteners was born.

Is aspartame safe? Not according to multiple studies conducted over decades. And, at one time, not according to the FDA. In 1975, the FDA put a hold on aspartame’s approval, citing deficiencies in the studies conducted by Searle and its contractors. An analysis [12] of 164 studies of aspartame’s potential impact on human safety found that of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 identified one or more problems with aspartame. Of the 74 industry-sponsored studies, all 74 claimed that aspartame was safe.

So how did aspartame get into our food supply? We have Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense to thank. In 1981, Rumsfeld, who had previously served as CEO of Searle, hand-picked [15] Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr. It was Hull who ultimately gave aspartame the green light.

Here’s how it went down. On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame as a sweetener in beverages. Hull, the brand new FDA commissioner, recommended by Rumsfeld, appointed a five-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's prior decision. (A board of inquiry had been formed in 1975 when the FDA first questioned the validity of Searle’s studies on aspartame). When it became clear that the Scientific Commission was on track to uphold the 1975 ban by a 3-2 decision, Hull installed a sixth member on the commission. That led to a deadlocked vote. Hull then personally cast the tie-breaking vote. Voila. Aspartame was approved.

Hull soon left the FDA and eventually landed at Burston-Marsteller, the PR firm for Searle and for years, Monsanto. In 1985, Monsanto bought Searle and later spun off the company under the name NutraSweet. But not before Rumsfeld earned a handsome $12-million bonus, presumably for his role in greasing the wheels for aspartame’s approval.

In an article [16] published earlier this year in the New York Times, entitled “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food,” Michael Moss exposed the junk food industry for employing chemists to concoct additives intended to hook people on the very food that is making us, including our children, not only obese, but chronically ill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld

Donald Henry Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932) is an American businessman, retired Navy Fighter Pilot, diplomat, and politician who served as the 13th Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977 and as the 21st Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. He is both the youngest (43 years old) and the oldest (74 years old) person to have served as Secretary of Defense as well as the only person to have served in the position for two non-consecutive terms. Overall, he was the second longest serving defense secretary behind Robert McNamara. Rumsfeld was White House Chief of Staff during part of the Ford Administration and also served in various positions in the Nixon Administration. He served four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and served as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO. He was an aviator in the United States Navy between 1954 and 1957 before transferring to the Naval Reserve. In public life, he has served as an official in numerous federal commissions and councils.

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Education

Rumsfeld went to Baker Demonstration School, a private middle school, and later graduated^{[^^6]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-5) from New Trier High School. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships (A.B., 1954). In extracurricular activities he was an accomplished amateur wrestler and a member of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back, and at Princeton he became captain of both the varsity wrestling team and the lightweight football team. While at Princeton he roomed with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.

His Princeton University senior thesis was titled "The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers."^{[^^7]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-6)

In 1956 he attended Georgetown University Law Center but did not graduate.

[edit] Domestic life

Rumsfeld married Joyce H. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They have three children and six grandchildren.

Rumsfeld lives in St. Michaels, Maryland, in a former plantation house, site of Frederick Douglass's breaking by Edward Covey.^{[^^8]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-7)

^...^

As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics.^{[^^14]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-13) He would later take part in Friedman's PBS series *Free to Choose*.^{[^^15]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-14)^...

Member of Congress

Rumsfeld was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Illinois' 13th congressional district in 1962, at the age of 30, and was re-elected by large majorities in 1964, 1966, and 1968.^{[^^12]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-whitehouse-11)

In the Congress, he served on the Joint Economic Committee, the Committee on Science and Aeronautics, and the Government Operations Committee, as well as on the Subcommittees on Military and Foreign Operations. He was also a co-founder of the Japanese-American Inter-Parliamentary Council.^{[^^13]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-utexas-12)

As a young Congressman, Rumsfeld attended seminars at the University of Chicago, an experience he credits with introducing him to the idea of an all volunteer military, and to the economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics.^{[^^14]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-13) He would later take part in Friedman's PBS series *Free to Choose*.^{[^^15]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-14)

[edit] Nixon Administration

Rumsfeld resigned from Congress in 1969 — his fourth term — to serve in the Nixon administration as Director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1969–1970); named Counselor to the President in December 1970, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program; and member of the President's Cabinet (1971–1972).

In 1971 Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."^{[^^16]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-rummy1-15)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-16)^{17]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-16)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-17)^{18]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-17)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-18)^{19]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-18)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-19)^{20]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-19)

In February 1973, Rumsfeld left Washington to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. He served as the United States' Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and the Defense Planning Committee, and the Nuclear Planning Group. In this capacity, he represented the United States in wide-ranging military and diplomatic matters.

[edit] Ford Administration

In August 1974, he was called back to Washington to serve as transition chairman for the new president, Gerald R. Ford. He had been Ford's confidant since their days in the House when Ford was House minority leader. Later in Ford's presidency, Rumsfeld became White House Chief of Staff, where he served from 1974 to 1975. In October 1975, Ford reshuffled his cabinet in the Halloween Massacre. He named Rumsfeld to become the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense; George H. W. Bush became Director of Central Intelligence. According to Bob Woodward's 2002 book *Bush at War*, a rivalry developed between the two men and "Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld was pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career."^{[21]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-20)

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld oversaw the transition to an all-volunteer military. He sought to reverse the gradual decline in the defense budget and to build up U.S. strategic and conventional forces, skillfully undermining Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the SALT talks.^{[22]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-NYTInfighter-21) He asserted, along with Team B (which he helped to set up),^{[23]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-22) that trends in comparative U.S.-Soviet military strength had not favored the United States for 15 to 20 years and that, if continued, they "would have the effect of injecting a fundamental instability in the world."^{[9]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-defenselink1-8) For this reason, he oversaw the development of cruise missiles, the B-1 bomber, and a major naval shipbuilding program.^[22]

In 1977, Rumsfeld was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.^{[24]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-defenselink2-23) Kissinger, his bureaucratic adversary, would later pay him a different sort of compliment, pronouncing him

...

Private career (1977–2000)

[edit] Academia

In early 1977 Rumsfeld briefly lectured at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, located in Chicago, Illinois near his home town of Evanston.

[edit] Business

From 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). In 1985, Searle was sold to Monsanto Company. Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around $12 million from this sale.^{[26]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-Beltway_lion-25)

Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. A leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies for cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasting applications, the company pioneered the development of the first all-digital high-definition television (HDTV) technology. After taking the company public and returning it to profitability, Rumsfeld returned to private business in late 1993.

From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead Sciences is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu.^{[27]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-26) As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's General Counsel to issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.^{[28]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-27)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-28)^{29]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-28)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-GR-29)^{30]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#cite_note-GR-29)

^=^

http://www.muckety.com/Donald-H-Rumsfeld/374.muckety

Frank C. Carlucci - roommate at Princeton Carlyle gp head

book

http://www.amazon.com/Rumsfeld-Rise-Fall-Catastrophic-Legacy/dp/1416535748

Cockburn describes Rumsfeld as a bully marred by hubris, a portrait previously drawn in Bob Woodward's State of Denial.

boho

Princeton University. Attended Cap & Gown events, according to Kay Griggs, just as Allen Dulles, William Colby, Frank Carlucci, James Baker, George P. Shultz, ang George R. Griggs (August 3, 2005, Rense). Naval aviator 1954-1957. Administrative assistant to a Congressman from Ohio 1957-1960. A.G. Becker investment firm from 1960-1962. Congressman 1962-1969. Various assistent jobs to the Nixon 1969-1973. U.S. ambassador to NATO in Belgium 1973-1974. White House Chief of Staff 1974-1975. He and Dick Cheney managed to keep the MKULTRA project in part under wraps in 1975. US Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford 1975-1977. Presidential Medal of Freedom 1977. CEO, president, and finally chairman of G.D. Searle & Company 1977-1985. Chairman of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies 1983-1986. In this period he managed to rammed aspartame through the FDA. Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around $12 million from the sale of Searle to Monsanto. US Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush 2000-2008. Member of an endless stream of committees 1982-2000. Involved in selling WMD to Saddam Houssein in the mid eighties. Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. and theRAND Corporation. Member of PNAC, the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg, the Bohemian Grove, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs (identified as a governor in 1987). Former member of theAdvisory Council of Forstmann Little & Co, just as Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz.

hill billies

un treaty of seas: 

Although the United States helped shape the Convention and its subsequent revisions, and though it signed the 1994 Agreement on Implementation, it has not signed the Convention.^[11][12]

On 16 July 2012, the U.S. Senate had 34 Republican Senators who have indicated their intention to vote against ratification of the Treaty if it comes to a vote. Since at least 2/3 of the 100 member Senate (at least 67 Senators) are required to ratify a treaty, consideration of the treaty was deferred again.^[13]

Some American commentators, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have warned that ratification of the Law of the Sea Treatymight lead to its taxing authority being extended to cover the resources ofouter space.^[14]