From AMERICAblog:
BREAKING: GOP sources say Rumsfeld is resigning
by John in DC – 11/08/2006 12:58:00 PM
Buh bye.
MSNBC just confirmed it from a senior White House official.
And just a week ago Bush said he was keeping Rumsfeld for the next 2 years.
Quack.
Rumsfeld should stand trial for war crimes.
Corruption under Rumsfeld in Iraq: here.
The next dominoes to fall should be George W Bush, Dick Cheney (who spent the election day hunting), Condoleezza Rice, and the rest of the gang.
On Wolfowitz, see here.
See also on Rumsfeld here.
According to Think Progress blog:
UPDATE: AP reports that Rumsfeld’s replacement will be Robert Gates, a former CIA Director (1991-93) and National Security Council official. He is currently the President of Texas A&M University.
UPDATE II: Robert Gates [see also here and here] is a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel co-chaired by James Baker III and Lee Hamilton to develop a new strategy for Iraq.
In Feb. 2005, Gates turned down an offer to serve as the Director of National Intelligence, the position now held by John Negroponte.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Saddam’s Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld
By Norman Solomon
Wednesday 08 November 2006
Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let’s reach back into history and extract these facts:
* On December 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld “visited Iraq in what US officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving US relations with that country.”
* Two days later, the New York Times cited a “senior American official” who “said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis.”
* On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.” Washington had some goodies for Saddam’s regime, the Times account noted, including “agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million.” And while “no results of the talks have been announced” after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, “Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq.”
* A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a New York Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the US government had “granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years.” The story recalled that “Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here,” and the dispatch mentioned in passing that “State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state.”
* Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld’s December 1983 visit with Saddam – who went on to use poison gas later in the decade, in actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration.
* As the most senior US official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan’s point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam’s military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to US intelligence sources. “In response to the gassing,” journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, “sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House.”
These are facts that the public should know about the current defense secretary of the United States.
——–
Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, is out in paperback. For information, go to: http://www.warmadeeasy.com.
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US DEFENSE SECRETARY RESIGNS!
Rumsfeld a forceful, divisive Pentagon chief
By Will Dunham 1 hour, 33 minutes ago (Yahoo News)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Rumsfeld, a forceful presence as U.S. defense secretary, designed and executed the Iraq war, and his legacy will be defined by a conflict costly to the United States in lives and money.
Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush’s Pentagon chief since 2001, directed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He sought to modernize the U.S. military. He created the Guantanamo Bay jail for foreign terrorism suspects. He presided over the Defense Department during the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Rumsfeld, an alternatively charming and caustic 74-year-old multimillionaire, wielded a level of influence as defense secretary rivaled perhaps only by Robert McNamara, who served presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War era. Both men headed the Pentagon during unpopular wars.
Rumsfeld inspired passionate reactions at home and aboard uncommon for a mere Cabinet secretary.
Admirers viewed Rumsfeld as a dedicated patriot who reinvigorated a military weakened by insufficient funding in the 1990s, devised innovative war plans that toppled the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan and President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and remained vigilant against threats to U.S. security.
Detractors painted him as a reckless warmonger who botched the Iraq occupation planning, sent too few troops, failed to anticipate a bloody insurgency, put soldiers into combat without enough armor, damaged the all-volunteer military and sullied America’s reputation by sanctioning detainee abuse.
But as he wrote in “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” his compilation of truisms dating back to the 1970s: “If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”
Another quote from “Rumsfeld’s Rules” may be equally apt: “It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.”
The Iraq war has cost far more than foreseen in financial and human terms. More than three years into the war, U.S. troops continue to fight insurgents. More than 2,800 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died.
The Iraq war has cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.
ALIENATED ALLIES
Rumsfeld alienated some U.S. allies in Europe, maintained icy relations with U.S. lawmakers, battled with Cabinet rivals including former Secretary of State Colin Powell and intimidated some senior U.S. military officers.
He also took aim at war critics, In August, he gave a speech recalling those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War Two and asked, “Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?”
Many Democrats and a growing number of fellow Republicans had called for him to be replaced.
This spring, a small group of retired generals demanded his resignation, accusing him of strategic blunders in Iraq and disregarding military advice. As he had before, Bush kept Rumsfeld despite howls for his ouster. In 2004, Bush twice refused to accept Rumsfeld’s offer to resign amid the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Rumsfeld, one of the longest-serving defense secretaries, held the job twice. In 1975, President Gerald Ford, for whom he also served as White House chief of staff, made him at age 43 the youngest Pentagon chief. In 2001, Bush made him the oldest.
Rumsfeld carried out a unique war plan in the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 that followed the September 11 attacks, using lots of air power and a small number of troops to oust the Taliban leaders who had harbored Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Bin Laden, however, remained a fugitive, and Afghanistan remains violent and chaotic.
U.S. forces led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003. More than 3-1/2 years later, the United States still has about 140,000 troops in Iraq, with violence surging, the U.S. death toll mounting and concern rising about all-out civil war.
Rumsfeld, born in Chicago on July 9, 1932, is a former college wrestler, Navy aviator, congressman from Illinois and corporate executive who held a variety of jobs in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
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*Rumsfeld Resigns*
Posted by: “hapi22” hapi22@earthlink.net robinsegg
Wed Nov 8, 2006 11:07 am (PST)
Some more good news.
NOTE: I assume Rumsfeld will now go to live on Bush’s new 98,000 acre
ranch in Paraguay where he can avoid subpoenas. Bush negotiated a treaty
with Paraguay — prior to signing the deed for the ranch — that
Paraguay would NOT extradite any war criminals to America or to any
other nation’s courts.
———————————————————-
*Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for
Democrats*
The Associated Press
Nov. 8, 2006
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in
Iraq, agreed to resign after six stormy years at the Pentagon, President
Bush announced today. Robert Gates, former head of the C.I.A., will be
nominated as his replacement.
Read the rest at:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/wire-rumsfeld.html?hp&ex=1163048400&en=350d55fe1c0ba5c8&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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a big thanks from Michael Moore
Posted by: “Tihs234@aol.com” Tihs234@aol.com edinared
Wed Nov 8, 2006 11:22 am (PST)
November 8th, 2006
Friends,
You did it! We did it! The impossible has happened: A majority of Americans have soundly and forcefully removed Bush’s party from control of the House of Representatives. And, sometime today perhaps, we may learn that the same miracle has happened in the Senate. Whatever the outcome, the American people have made two things crystal clear: End this war, and stop Mr. Bush from doing any more damage to this country we love. That is what this election was about. Nothing else. Just that. And it’s a message that has sent shock waves throughout Washington — and a note of hope around this troubled world.
Now the real work begins. Unless we stay on top of these Democrats to do the right thing, they will do what they’ve always done: Screw it up. Big Time.
They helped Bush start this war, and now they should make amends. But let’s take a day to rejoice and revel in a rare victory for our side — the side that doesn’t believe in unprovoked invasions of other countries.
This is your day, my friends. You have worked hard for it. I can’t tell you how proud I am to count all of you as part of the greater American mainstream we now occupy. Thank you for all the time you gave this week to get out the vote. Some of you have been at this since the large demonstrations of February 2003 when we tried to stop the war before it started. Only 10-20% of the country agreed with us at that time. Remember how lonely that was? Some people were even booed! Now, 60% of the country agrees with our position. They are us and we are them. What a nice, strange, hopeful feeling.
A woman, for the first time in our history, will be Speaker of the House.
The attempt to ban all abortion in the conservative state of South Dakota was defeated. Laws to raise the minimum wage were passed. Democrats were elected to fill Tom DeLay’s and Mark Foley’s seats. Detroit’s John Conyers, Jr. is going to be the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Democratic governor of Michigan beat the CEO from Amway. The little township next to where I live in Michigan voted Democratic for the first time since… ever. And on and on and on. The good news will continue throughout today. Let’s enjoy it.
Savor it. And use it to get Congress to finally listen to the majority.
If you want to do one thing today, send an email or a letter to both of your senators and your member of Congress and tell them, in no uncertain terms, what this election means: End the war — and don’t let George W. Bush get away with any more of his bright ideas.
Congratulations, again! Now let’s go find a spine for the Dems to do the job we’ve sent them there to do.
Yours in victory (for once!),
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com
P.S. Thanks for all those photos you sent me of you with your brooms at your polling places. They’re still coming in and we’re posting them here throughout the day. And for those of you who asked how “Sicko” is coming along, the answer is: better than we ever expected! We’re hard at work in the edit room and it will be in theaters in June. Thanks again, everyone, for your support.
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Posted by: “jackholman@juno.com” jackholman@juno.com
Thu Nov 9, 2006 10:38 am (PST)
War Crimes Suit Prepared against RumsfeldThursday, November 9th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444246 The president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, is heading to Germany today to file a new case charging outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with war crimes for authorizing torture at Guantanamo Bay.
Would Rumsfeld stepping down leave him open to prosecution? In 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a criminal complaint in Germany on behalf of several Iraqi citizens who alleged that a group of U.S. officials committed war crimes in Iraq. Rumsfeld was among the officials named in the complaint. The Iraqis claimed they were victims of electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation and sexual abuse. Germany’s laws on torture and war crimes permits the prosecution of suspected war criminals wherever they may be found. Now, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, is returning to Germany to file a new complaint. Michael Ratner joins us in our firehouse studio. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Copyright © 2006- Democracy Now!, All Rights Reserved–>www.democracynow.org
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Posted by: “Scott Bidstrup” scott@bidstrup.com comms_engr
Thu Nov 9, 2006 11:56 am (PST)
hapi22 wrote:
>
> A grateful nation woke up this morning to find out that we have been saved from fascism and tyranny, from creating more horror in Iraq, from debt and more debt, from the destruction of our Constitution … and from having to look at Bush swagger anymore.
Before everyone breaks out the champaign, I would point out that Bush is still president, that he is still asserting “unitary executive” authority, and I have seen precious little effort by the Democratic minority in the last congress to challenge him. He has just appointed a fascist crony to replace Donald Rumsfeld. But do I hear howls of protest from Nancy Pelosi, or threats to hold hearings about his massive and deliberate manipulation of intelligence when he served as CIA director under Reagan? No. Is Pelosi calling for impeachment hearings over ol’ Smirkey’s patently anti-constitutional conduct? No. Is she demanding an immediate stop the the surveillance and harassment campaigns against Bush’s political enemies, threatening endless hearings and mass servings of subpoenas if they’re not stopped? No. Is she protesting the abridgment of even your right to flee into exile? No. And there is a good reason why she is not. As liberal as she pretends to be, she is nonetheless a card-carrying member of the DLC.
Until the Democratic Leadership Council and its carefully chosen fair-haired-boys, the “National Security” Democrats are out of office and are no longer in charge of the Democratic Party, we’re just going to see a lot of the Joe Lieberman-type of symbolic opposition to the efforts of the ruling elite to secure the unchallengeable authority of a fascist dictatorship.
Who are the “National Security” Democrats? They are the Democrats that allowed, without a whimper of protest, the CIA-led installation of brutal, ultra-right-wing fascist dictatorships all across Latin America and East Asia in what was known as the National Security Doctrine – do you seriously believe they are any more enamored of democracy at home? The DLC-types are fascist neoconservatives in all but name, and are no more progressive than Joe Lieberman – they’re just a *lot* more circumspect and discreet about it. They are the ones that quietly enabled the passage of most of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” – the centerpiece of the Republican “revolution” – and during a Democratic administration, no less. They are the ones that stifled dissent in the Democratic caucus in Congress as Bush has systematically dissembled the Bill of Rights. So if you’re expecting instant nirvana, you’re dreaming – and playing right into the hands of the fascists.
Folks, don’t kid yourselves. Freedom isn’t free. We’ve made the down payment, but now comes the long, hard slog to pay off the mortgage and get the republic back in progressive hands. We can only do that by doing some hard lifting – taking back the Democratic Party from the DLC, formulating and articulating an intelligent, well-thought-out progressive message, and getting it out there in the public discourse in a way that refutes the tsunami of propaganda that will surely be arrayed against it. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, but it is vitally necessary. And if/when we do achieve victory in that far distant day – and that is by no means certain – then arrives the time for eternal vigilance. So put away the champaign. There is much work to do and the appropriate time to celebrate is a long way off, because the fight isn’t over.
Regards from a true political exile,
Scott Bidstrup
http://www.bidstrup.com/exile.htm
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Robert Gates Promoted and Financed Osama Bin Laden
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@mindspring.com chocoano05
Thu Nov 9, 2006 2:50 pm (PST)
Our new Secretary of War has all the right qualifications for a top job with the Bush Crime Family. Congress should not confirm this nomination, who may be even worse than Rumsfeld.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/9/34541/0328
Robert Gates Promoted and Financed Osama Bin Laden
by LondonYank
Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 12:45:40 AM PST
Robert Gates made Osama Bin Laden what he is today. This is not exaggeration. By funding Osama Bin Laden’s operations, training camps, weaponry and political influence from 1979 (even before Russia invaded Afghanistan), Robert Gates personally gave us our principal enemy in the “War on Terror”.
More frighteningly, all of Robert Gates’ support to Osama Bin Laden ran through Pakistan’s ISI. ISI has been linked to training and funding the 9/11 bombers, the London bombers, the Madrid bombers, the Bali bombers and the Delhi bombers but is strangely immune from official Washington scrutiny.
I really wonder which side Robert Gates thinks he’s on. With a 30 year history of pomoting and financing state and non-state terrorism, I doubt it is the side of the peace and prosperity of the American people and bringing our troops home safe. LondonYank’s diary :: :: CREATING A QUAGMIRE – PART I
It is ironic indeed that a man who engineered the quagmire in Afghanistan which bankrupted and demoralised the Soviet Union, precipitating its collapse, should be brought in to direct our own quagmire which is bankrupting the United States Treasury and precipitating the collapse of American hegemony in the world.
In his 1996 memoir From the Shadows, former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates revealed the $500 million in non-lethal aid which was designed to counter the billions the Soviets were providing their puppet regime. Some American policymakers were eager to lure the Soviets into a Vietnam-like entanglement. Gates recounts that at a key meeting on March 30, 1979, Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe wondered aloud whether ‘there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, “sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.”‘ Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said in a 1998 interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur,: ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.’ The cynicism with which Gates and others backed Al Qaeda is revealed in this Zbigniew Brzezinski interview:
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? The CIA was instrumental in setting up the network of madrassas in Pakistan which train the bulk of Islamic terrorists worldwide and in promoting the regional spread of fundamentalist Islamic jihad.
“[I]t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged.” (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks In the US, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/… , 16 September 2001) US support to the Mujahideen initiated during the Carter administration led to the pumping of “billions of dollars into the Afghan cause and thousands of Islamic zealots were given specialist training in the US and Britain.” (Review of John Cooley’s Unholy Wars – Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, http://www.neue-einheit.com/… ) : “In the United States they experienced tough courses in endurance, weapons use, sabotage, and killing techniques, communications and other skills. They were required to impart these skills to the scores of thousands of fighters who formed the centre and the base of the pyramid of holy war.” (John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars – Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, London Pluto Press, 1999, p. 81.) . . . The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their own ; arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave many hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totaling probably more than a billion; pressuring and bribing Pakistan — with whom recent American relations had been very poor — to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; putting the Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, onto the CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation. (Phil Gasper, Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden, and the Taliban International Socialist Review, November-December 2001, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/… ) A RECIPE FOR COOKED INTELLIGENCE AND COVER-UPS
Melvin Goodman, a 20 year veteran of the CIA who testified against confirmation of Gates in 1991, writes in Foreign Policy in Focus:
In his memoirs, former secretary of state George Shultz demonstrated that CIA involvement in a policy of covert action tainted its intelligence. His memoirs remind us that when operations and analysis get mixed up, “the president gets bum dope.” Shultz demonstrated how this happened in the 1980s in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, all contributign to the strife we face today in Southwest Asia. CIA director William Casey and his deputy Robert Gates covered up important intelligence regarding Pakistani nuclear developments in order to protect the covert action program supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, and they exaggerated the role of the Stingers against Soviet forces in order to trumpet clandestine deliveries of surface- to-air weapons. When I challenged the operational director of the deliveries about providing weapons to the most reactionary members of the mujahedeen long after the Soviet withdrawal, he responded “we merely delivered the weapons to Pakistan and let God sort it out.” This is the mentality that provided weapons and influence to Bin Laden and other anti-western fanatics. CREATING A QUAGMIRE – PART II: THE QUAGMIRE COMES HOME TO ROOST.
The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its “mission,” had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual “Soviet Military Power” report right up to 1990. Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money – and most importantly – the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.
That decision is coming home to roost.
The Cold Warriors were proud of luring the Soviets into the quagmire of Afghanistan, but their role in luring the United States into the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq remains too murky.
“The full story of the productive (sic) U.S.-China cooperation directed against the Soviet Union (especially in regard to Afghanistan), initiated by the Carter Administration and continued under Reagan, still remains to be told,” Brzezinski wrote in his book, The Geostrategic Triad.
That story needs to be told before Robert Gates is confirmed as Secretary of Defense.
WE OWE OUR TROOPS BETTER
We owe it to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq not to put them under the command of a man implicated in financing and training the enemies they fight. We owe it to the troops to give them a commander who will protect them from IEDs and missiles, not one with a proven record of protecting the ISI who supplies those weapons.
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Posted by: “RONALD GATES” ronnmorrison@btopenworld.com ronald8212
Fri Nov 10, 2006 8:43 pm (PST)
Rumsfeld – war criminal, Monsanto man, racketeer?
GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org
1.MONSANTO MEN in USA Government
2.Racketeering charges filed against Donald Rumsfeld…
3.World welcomes shift in Washington political landscape
EXTRACTS: much of the world welcomed the electoral rebuke given President Bush’s Republican Party and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday
In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as “the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world.” (item3)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by Monsanto… Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around US$12 million from the sale of Searle to Monsanto. (item 1)
Racketeering charges have been filed against Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Monsanto, NutraSweet Co., the American Diabetes Association and Dr Robert Moser for distributing toxic aspartame, in a class action representing many plaintiffs, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking $350 million in damages.
The suit charges the defendants with manufacturing and marketing a deadly neurotoxin unfit for human consumption… US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is mentioned throughout the lawsuit. (item 2)
—
—
1.MONSANTO MEN in USA Government
http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/50940.php
The Bush administration’s could be called the Monsanto Cabinet, per Robert Cohen, author of “Milk, The Deadly Poiso” which details the horrid politics behind the contamination of our nation’s milk and beef supply with bovine growth hormone.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by Monsanto. Rumsfeld was also the Secretary of Defense under President Ford.
Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around US$12 million from the sale of Searle to Monsanto.
Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly received $10,000 for his senatorial campaign from Monsanto in the mid 90s. Ashcroft’s contribution from Monsanto was five times that of any other congressional hopeful. Ashcroft, and Sr. Bush Supreme Court appointee Clarence Thomas were instrumental in gaining Food and Drug Administation (FDA) approval for Monsanto’s controversial artificial sweetener aspartame, which has been linked to over 200 ailments that include Alzheimer’s disease, juvenile diabetes, depression, epileptic seizures, blindness, memory loss, excitability, weight gain, multiple sclerosis and lupus (The Idaho Observer, November, 2000).
[Former] Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman was on the board of directors of Calgene Pharmaceutical, another company currently owned by Monsanto.
Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson is the fourth member of the Bush cabinet to have direct ties to Monsanto. The former governor of Wisconsin designated his state as a “biotech zone” for the use of Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone even though dairy farmers in his state opposed the designation by a 9-1 ratio. Thompson reportedly received $50,000 from biotech companies during his election campaign.
Bovine growth hormone, which does increase the productivity of dairy cows, has also been linked to many health problems in children and adults (The Idaho Observer, November, 2000) and makes cows sick.
Bovine growth hormone has been outlawed in most countries, but not the U.S.
And as Cohen points out, another player in the Monsanto-studded Cabinet is Rep. Richard Pombo, who will head the Agriculture Subcommittee on Dairy, Livestock and Poultry. Pombo is also a Monsanto boy, having taken campaign money from it while stalling a 1994 bill to make labeling mandatory for milk or milk products containing Bovine Growth Hormones. Pombo helped kill the bill in committee…
Monsanto has proven to be one of the most greedy, ruthless and environmentally irreverent corporations in world history. One cannot serve the interests of Monsanto and serve the interests of people at the same time
—
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2.Racketeering charges have been filed against Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Monsanto…
http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/50940.php
Racketeering charges have been filed against Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Monsanto, NutraSweet Co., the American Diabetes Association and Dr Robert Moser for distributing toxic aspartame, in a class action representing many plaintiffs, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking $350 million in damages.
The suit charges the defendants with manufacturing and marketing a deadly neurotoxin unfit for human consumption, while they assured the pubic that aspartame (also known as NutraSweet/Equal) contaminated products are safe and healthful, even for children and pregnant women. Present US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is mentioned throughout the lawsuit.
As evidence, an explosive affidavit from a former translator for the GD Searle company – the developer of aspartame – was made recently public and revealed the following.
For 16 years, the Food and Drug Administration denied approval of aspartame because of compelling evidence of its contributing to brain tumours and other serious disabilities. Donald Rumsfeld left President Ford’s administration as Chief of Staff to become the CEO of aspartame-producer GD Searle Co. in 1981. Shortly after, Rumsfeld became the CEO, and the day after President Reagan took office, aspartame was quickly approved by FDA Commissioner Arthur Hayes over the objections of the FDA’s Public Board of Inquiry. Hayes had been recently appointed by the Reagan Administration. Shortly after aspartame’s approval by the FDA, Hayes joined NutraSweet’s public relations firm under a 10-year contract at $1,000 a day.
In January 1977, the FDA wrote a 33-page letter to US Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner: “We request that your office convene a Grand Jury investigation into apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.” Skinner allowed the Statute of Limitations to run. Three FDA Commissioners and eight other officers and Skinner took jobs in the aspartame industry shortly after it was approved.
The FDA once listed 92 adverse reactions from 10,000 consumer complaints and would send the list to all inquirers. In 1996 the FDA stopped taking complaints and now denies the existence of the report. Seizures, blindness, sexual dysfunction, obesity, testicular, mammary and brain tumours and death plus dozens of other dread diseases named in the suit, arise from the consumption of this neurotoxin.
Defendant Moser, past CEO of NutraSweet, is cited for misrepresenting facts to public and commercial users with full knowledge of the deceptions. Aspartame/Nutrasweet is sold to Bayer, Con Agra Foods, Dannon, Smucker, Kellogg, Wrigley, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods (Crystal Light), Conopco (Slim-Fast), Coke, Pfizer, Wal-Mart and Wyeth (to name a few), who use it in some of their products, including children’s vitamins. These entities are named in other suits now in Californian courts.
Defendant American Diabetes Association is meant to care for diabetics. A 35-year ADA member, diabetic specialist HJ Roberts, MD, FACP, discovered aspartame can precipitate or aggravate diabetes and its complications, or simulate the complications (especially neuropathy and retinopathy). His report, intended for the Annual Scientific Meeting of the ADA, was rejected for presentation – and even publication of the abstract – but was later published in another medical journal.
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3.World welcomes shift in Washington political landscape, but worries about future
By Paul Haven
ASSOCIATED PRESS, November 8 2006
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20061108-1409-eln-elections-worldview.html
MADRID, Spain – Politicians, analysts and ordinary citizens across much of the world welcomed the electoral rebuke given President Bush’s Republican Party and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday.
Against the broad mood of satisfaction, however, there were voices of concern that a power split between Democrats and Republicans in Washington might mean uncertainty in crucial areas like global trade talks.
On Iraq, some worried that Democrats could force a too-rapid retreat, leaving the country and the region in chaos. Others said they doubted the congressional turnover would have a dramatic impact on Iraq policy any time soon, largely because the Democrats have yet to define the course they want to take.
But from Paris to Pakistan, a repeated theme was hope that the Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress would force Bush to adopt a more conciliatory approach to global crises, and teach a president many see as a “cowboy” a lesson in humility.
“Americans are realizing that you can’t found the politics of a country on patriotic passion and reflexes,” said French schoolteacher Jean-Pierre Charpemtrat.
“You can’t fool everybody all the time – and I think that’s what Bush and his administration are learning today.”
Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Rumsfeld’s surprise resignation underscored the depth of what has happened in America.
“Even though U.S. politics had already started changing, Rumsfeld’s resignation means an accentuation of this change,” Prodi said. “We’ll see over the next few days what the new direction will be. But certainly we have a political structure … deeply different from that of a few days ago.”
In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as “the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has consistently railed against the Bush administration, called the election “a reprisal vote.”
Bush is deeply unpopular in many countries, with particularly intense opposition to the war in Iraq, the U.S. terror holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allegations of Washington-sanctioned interrogation methods that some equate with torture.
Many said they thought the big gains by Democrats signaled the beginning of the end of Bush’s tenure.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, Jens Langfeldt, 35, said he didn’t know much about the midterm elections but was opposed to Bush, referring to the president as “that cowboy.”
In Sri Lanka, a country divided by war, some said they hoped the rebuke would force Bush to abandon a unilateral approach to global issues.
“The Americans have made it clear that current American policy should change in dealing with the world, from a confrontational approach, to a more consensus-based and bridge-building approach,” said Jehan Perera, a political analyst. The Democratic win means “there will be more control and restraint” over U.S. foreign policy.
Passions were even higher in Pakistan, where Bush is deeply unpopular despite billions in aid and support for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
One opposition lawmaker, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, said he welcomed the election result, but was hoping for more. Bush “deserves to be removed, put on trial and given a Saddam-like death sentence,” he said.
But while the result clearly produced more jubilation than jitters, there were also some deep concerns.
In Denmark, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told broadcaster TV2 he hoped the president and the new Congress would find “common ground on questions about Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“The world needs a vigorous U.S.A.,” Fogh Rasmussen said.
There was also some concern that Democrats, who have a reputation for being more protective of U.S. jobs going overseas, will make it harder to achieve a global free trade accord. And in China, some feared the resurgence of the Democrats would increase tension over human rights and trade and labor issues. China’s surging economy has a massive trade surplus with the United States.
“The Democratic Party … will protect the interests of small and medium American enterprises and labor and that could produce an impact on China-U.S trade relations,” Zhang Guoqing of the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in a report on Sina.com, one of China’s most popular Internet portals.
The prospect of a sudden change in American foreign policy could also be troubling to U.S. allies such as Britain, Japan and Australia, which have thrown their support behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Asked whether the resignation of Rumsfeld signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, “Well, there’s certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon.”
“The problem for Arabs now is, an American withdrawal (from Iraq) could be a security disaster for the entire region,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi analyst for the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. He said the Middle East could be left to cope with a disintegrating Iraq mired in civil war, with refugees fleeing a failed state that could become an incubator for terrorism.
It was unclear, however, whether the American election would bring a major shift in Iraq, in part because the Democrats have not come ahead with a clear action plan, said Michael McKinley, a political science professor at the Australian National University.
“There would have been some concern in policy making circles here if the Democrats had said, ‘We are definitely going to withdraw by Christmas,’” McKinley said. “But they’re not able to say that.”
AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.
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Anyone But Rummy Syndrome
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@mindspring.com chocoano05
Wed Dec 6, 2006 12:39 am (PST)
A CIA Insider’s Take on Gates
By Ray McGovern
The Miami Herald
Monday 04 December 2006
The lame-duck Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee seems determined to force through confirmation of Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. The hurry is synthetic – and totally unnecessary.
I know, I know – everyone but Barney the dog wants Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon tout suite. According to a Pentagon spokesman, however, Gates has commitments that would preclude his taking the reins at the Pentagon until January. So, senators, relax already. Let Rumsfeld spend December at one of his houses in Taos, while you do your homework. There is no exaggerating the importance of the Gates candidacy.
Even Democrats on the committee are saying Gates is a shoo-in barring an unexpected disclosure. But the likelihood of such a disclosure seems nil, with Gates the sole witness at his hearing Tuesday. Still, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who was an analyst in the State Department’s intelligence bureau and now sits on the House Intelligence Committee, has called Gates’ nomination “deeply troubling” and appealed for hearings that are “thorough and probing.”
Gates has primarily two things going for him, which hardly suffice to justify confirmation:
* The Anyone-But-Rumsfeld syndrome, which has understandable appeal. Just how much appeal was brought home to me last week, when a former colleague who worked closely with Gates during Iran-Contra said, “Despite my misgivings, I would support Satan himself in preference to Rumsfeld.”
* The Not-Enough-Evidence-To-Indict bromide offered reluctantly by Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel who led the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. Walsh was frustrated by Gates’ remarkable inability to recall explosive information that his subordinates swore under oath they had told him “about Oliver North’s illegal activities,” for example. (Gates’ supporters still brag about his “eidetic [institutional] memory.”) Walsh wrote:
“The statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless … a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
The Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, Carl Levin, D-Mich., who voted against Gates’ nomination in 1991 to be director of the CIA, said he wanted to give Gates a “fresh look; a lot of time has passed.” Well, highly damaging evidence has come to light since 1991, implicating Gates in some of the most serious national-security scandals of the 1980s. Veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry, for one, has been providing chapter and verse on Consortiumnews.com.
For example, in January 1995, Howard Teicher, who served on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff, submitted a sworn affidavit detailing the activities of Gates and his then-boss, CIA Director William Casey, in secretly providing arms to Iraq. This violated the Arms Export Control Act in two ways: ignoring the requirement to notify Congress; and providing arms to a state designated as a sponsor of terrorism.
It gets worse. To grease the skids for this dubious adventure, Gates ordered his more malleable subordinates at the CIA to cook up intelligence reports to provide some comfort to Reagan in acquiescing to these activities. A National Intelligence Estimate of May 1985 predicted Soviet inroads in Iran if the United States did not reach out to “moderates” within the Iranian leadership.
In addition, Gates’ analysts were pressed to publish several reports beginning in late 1985 – as HAWK anti-aircraft missiles wended their way to Tehran – that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had “dropped off substantially.” There was no persuasive evidence to support that judgment.
As part of my official duties at the time, I took steps to make Gates aware of this a month before he wrote in articles in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs magazine and our professional journal Studies in Intelligence that, “No CIA publication asserted these things.” I then tried in vain to get him to correct the record.
Hold the Nomination
Since this episode casts serious doubt on Gates’ veracity, I felt a responsibility to bring it to the attention of the senators weighing Gates’ nomination to become CIA director in 1991. On Oct. 7, 1991, I swore in an affidavit laying out the facts and gave it to the Senate Intelligence Committee. I heard nothing.
It is difficult to believe that senators have become so used to being diddled by administration officials and nominees that they shy away from looking seriously into such matters. After the brutal nomination hearings in 1991, then-Sen. Tom Daschle addressed the $64,000 question – “Whether Gates might continue to trim the truth” – and insisted: “We cannot afford to take that chance.”
Nor should we take that chance now. As Iraq goes down the drain, and “the crazies” accelerate their campaign to bomb Iran, what is more important than a defense secretary from whom Congress can expect truthful testimony?
Hold the Gates nomination over to January.
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Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and Robert Gates’ branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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