Rumsfeld’s religious war

I'm truly disgusted to learn of newest evidence for the religious underpinnings for Donald Rumsfeld's (and George Bush's) thought process. GQ has revealed that Rumsfeld authored an entire series of Bible/war memos, "Top Secret Briefings," to get Bush fired up that he was on God's side in a Manichean struggle.

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.

For those who say that religion is good, that is sometimes true. Many people have been inspired by religion to channel their natural empathy into acts of kindness. To those who say religion is dangerous, that is also sometimes true, as witnessed by America's religious war waged in Iraq. Thanks to the Bush Administration's application of religion, 100,000 people are dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and millions of Iraqis who have lost their homes. I would say, as a general rule that we should always discourage violence in the name of religion. Religion is too often a potent mind-altering trip. Too often, it causes people to unplug their pre-frontal cortices, so that their base instincts, especially their xenophobia, rise's to the top. Religion is too often used to concoct needless imaginary lines between and among groups of people, resulting in growing distrust, which too often ripens into seething hate. Bottom line: Thanks to Rumsfeld's (and Bush's) embrace of what we now know (better than ever) to be religious violence, our "secular" government was able to conclude that their religious ends justified their military means, and that any lie, any torture, and any amount of collateral damage was justified. All of this in the name of God.

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Frank Rich: It’s time to dig up Bush’s buried bodies

Frank Rich has just written an article pointing to a wide variety of Bush Administration scandals about to be revealed. He urges President Obama to let the information flow because there is a momentum to the process and it is, in fact, inevitable. The strangest one, in my opinion, is Donald Rumsfeld's private bible quote laden newsletter. Strange and revealing, though not at all surprising. Rumsfeld's newsletter, entitled Worldwide Intelligence Update, was:

[A] highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

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More details about torture conducted by the U.S.

Details of the senseless torture committed by Americans continue to come out, but many details have been easily available for several years. Consider this 2006 article by Esquire, which I found at the Daily Dish. It is incredibly disturbing not only because of the behavior of the personnel, but because the information inexorably points to complicity by high-ranking officers and members of the Bush Administration.

[W]hen Church issued his report in March 2005, it found "no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse" and blamed all the trouble with torture on rogue soldiers.

That's when Fishback contacted Garlasco.

Bottom Line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody. This behavior violates the professional military ethic of "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do" and it violates the constitutional principle of a government accountable to the people.

MARC GARLASCO PUSHES the tape recorder across the table, a little closer to Jeff . . .

This is where one of the stories begins. It's one of many disturbing stories, they are increasingly coming out, and they are all pointing to systematic torture, not just a rogue soldier here or there. It's time for Congressional hearings and war crimes prosecutions. Shouldn't we move forward, though? Yes, we should. We should move forward through this unseemly American conduct, not around it. We need to understand how this could have happened, or else it will occur again at the whim of the military. If it isn't prosecuted, it will occur at the whim of state and local police. We need to look at this conduct up close, as difficult as it is. We need those who were responsible, especially high-ranking officials, to feel intense shame.

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The night of 9/11

From Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush White House: Richard Clarke: That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I…

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Rumsfeld’s propaganda – his “snowflakes”

We all knew it, but the details are now pouring in. It's all so very reprehensible . . . This is an excerpt from today's Washington Post: In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and…

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