August 5, 2012 - 11:02 am
Rumsfeld: Israel shouldn’t tell the US before striking Iran
Former U.S. defense secretary tells Fox News that international sanctions have had no impact on the Iranian regime • Given leaks at White House, Rumsfeld says he would not notify U.S. of Iran plans if he were in the Israeli government.
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From the link:
In other words, the White House could be siding with the mullahs…
Unfortunately, I’m not sure we could get away with it. It’s not like we were an independent country, after all.
Air and space power is the key to Israel’s survival. If I were them, to the maxixmum extent possible, I would start weaning my abilities to obtain and field such power from dependence upon the blessings of the United States government.
A major reason why we did not fight Iran over the 1979-1981 Embassy Hostage crises or more recently, is because of all those fair-minded Americans who don’t like bullies and would rather see a “fair fight”.
This not only helps understand Carter’s policies, they explain Obama’s as well.
No, we didn’t fight Iran in 1979 because they were backed by the Soviet Union, and we didn’t consider it worth starting WW3 just for that.
Close but Carter was a wuss actually and would never have given those orders. Reagan on the other hand was looking at the bigger picture of turning the CCCP into a distant memory. If not for that the mullas would be mutton chow by now.
I was Active Army during the hostage crisis. Little known is that Carter had our Rapid Reaction forces on 18 hour alert (I was in one such unit), lined up on airfields awaiting for the word, “go.” And three times he backed down.
(The impression we had gotten at the time was that our target would be the oil fields of Abadan)
It wasn’t until late 1979 that the revolution occurred, and the Embassy takeover followed shortly after. Khomeini’s regime didn’t have time to become a Soviet client state. No, Carter was just foolish and shortsighted, choosing timidity in response to such a blatant act of war.
I was aboard the Nimitz. We got underway from Naples in early January 1980, took on the RH-53s at night as we transited Gibralter and steamed around Africa witht a couple nuclear cruisers to GONZO Station.
Rich K had it right. Carter was a wuss. We used to say “I sailed 10,000 miles to smoke a Camel, but nobody would give me a light”.
Even back then I wondered about staging the attack over the Caspian from Azerbaijan. Figured even the Soviets did not have an interest in Muslim fundamentalism gaining in that region.
Now, my kids will fight the war that was mine to fight.
I hate that.
I agree with you. My comment was to say that the Soviets wouldn’t have gone to war with us over a bunch of revolutionaries that hadn’t been in power more than a month. They weren’t worth it. Carter owns the blame, for acting the wuss.
The Soviets would have stopped us from saving our own men? Really?
I’ve always been a huge Rummy fan. I was an Air Force liaison officer with Army when 9/11 happened. With exception of wanting to take fight to Afghanistan, Rummy’s talk of a “transformation in military affairs” never went over big with my Army buddies, but I thought it was awesome. His other characteristic I greatly admired, along with Dick Cheney and John Bolton, was speaking in short, declarative sentences that did not require parsing for relevant information. He took a spear for team Bush, and I can appreciate that…it is what you do. Bob Gates was a worthwhile replacement whose main role was to un-ruffle feathers ruffled by Rummy, but then he got stuck with current SCOAMF.
Amen, stephen b. The man is straight forward and made very tough decisions when they needed to be made. Others can and will second guess, but Rumsfeld didn’t shirk his doings. For the sake of others, we stood by them.
I love this guy – this guy is a true American leader. He was absolutely raped by the left, and far too many non-lefties, or if you want to call them conservatives, fell for it. I regard it as a fundamental defect of judgment if someone fails to appreciate that this man is indispensable. And If you want to learn interesting things about the work of DoD after 9/11, check out his website.
If I were the Israelis, not only would I not tell the Obama Administration when and how I would strike Iran, I would also have the Mossad looking up any possible dirt on Mr. Obama and then deliver it to the Romney campaign with a big red bow on it. But, that’s just me.
The Israelis had this figured out looooonnnng ago.
Israel hasn’t survived for over 60 years surrounded and vastly outnumbered by being stupid.
As an Israeli, I wish I shared your confidence.
Besides, I’m not even sure we have the logistical ability (not that I have any special knowledge).
If the Israelis are smart, and the stupidest one on the planed is a genius compared to the Dipshit in Chief, they will use the WH for disinformation specifically intended for the Iranians. It is my solemn hope and prayer that the Israelis completely anihilate the Iranian ledership. By any means they find workable. Perhaps a big dump of brochures depicting the enjoying a ham dinner with the Obozo and First Wookie. Then an evening of watching Infidel Porn followed by a night out in the really popular waterin holes getting shit faced motherless drunk.
Love it and love him! He is the greatest!
SPD: If there’s dirt to be had on Obama, rest assured, the Mossad already has it. What they do with it is another question entirely; it would probably be bumped up to the political decision makers. (That means, ultimately, Bibi Netanyahu… who, as you may recall, has been personally snubbed by Obama several times. Hmm.)
Rumsfeld is absolutely right. Israel cannot trust the United States to keep its secrets vis-a-vis Iran. And yes, you gotta love a man who refuses to mince words!
By the way, Rumsfeld points out that Israel wiped out Iraq’s nuclear capabilities in one strike, in 1981… and did the same for Syria a few years ago. Now Israel seems poised to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that Israel has been castigated all these years for not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty… and has meanwhile done more to prevent rogue states from going nuclear than anybody else.
AND were condemned for it, even though everyone knew what it was for.
Dubya failed fiscally, but he did appoint Rumsfeld and Bolton, and select Cheney as his VP.
Those appointments alone make him a million times better than Zero and Bubba.
The man may be honest but he strikes me as astonishingly wrong-headed. He didn’t send in enough troops at the start to find Bin Laden in Afghanistan. He pushed a war we didn’t need to fight in Iraq (he said it would pay for itself). And now, despite lack of lack of a threat to the United States (or for that matter even to Israel) he wants us to bomb Iran. He’ll put this country in a twenty year depression if he does that. But I agree with one thing–the man’s honest. He never saw a war he didn’t want us to fight.
Code Pink,Code Pink. Just kidding,your just another lucky f_ck to be born here and survive under the blanket of security guys like Rummy made sure was adequate to keep you in Hot Pockets and internet pron.
code pink?
I thought they disbanded as soon as obama got into office and quadrupled our deployment to Afghanistan.
they didn’t want to appear racist, I guess.
I’m sure they’ll get the band back together for romney’s presidency.
code pink?
I thought they disbanded as soon as obama got into office and quadrupled our deployment to Afghanistan.
they didn’t want to appear racist, I guess.
I’m sure they’ll get the band back together for romney’s presidency.
“He never saw a war he didn’t want us to fight.”
afghanistan?
bush/cheney/rumsfeld never got more than 25k soldiers in country.
total spending 01-08: 171.7 billion.
casualties, us: 630 dead.
obama bumped troop strength up, for ‘his’ surge, to over 95k-
spending, 09-11(2012 not included): 283.8 billion.
us casualties09 to present: 1445 dead.
can you honestly offer any criticism of rumsfeld, while remaining silent on the tragic mistake that has been committed by ther obama admin?
yes, obama killed bin laden. in pakistan. or, 472 dead us soldiers ago.
there isn’t a single criticism that one could offer against the iraq war, that does not exist for afghanistan.
“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know, we don’t know.”
“known knowns”?
you will never win a land war in afghanistan.
never fear…
obama is going to bring home some of the troops…
68k left in country in 2014, by his own plan.
You make a grave mistake to think I support Obama. I also never voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Mondale, Carter, LBJ or Hubert Humphrey. I’m a Navy vet who hated to see the USS Liberty get blown to smithereens and our government not doing even so much as to say “Excuse me, sir.” So when American soldiers’ lives are wasted for no good reason, such as for instance in Iraq, it tends to get my dander up.
for someone who is concerned with troops lives, the argument that rummy didn’t send enough troops, assuming tora bora is the instance you are referring to, is a complete 180.
how many hundreds of soldiers would you have sent to their deaths, trying to capture bin laden, with zero intel, as they tried to move up through a fortified mountain?
you are a fraud.
@Duscany
Lol, it’s a good thing your types weren’t in charge during WWII. You would have been be too busy trying to can the war fighting leadership for various misdeeds, both real and imagined, than actually trying to win that war.
Duscany and his ilk are partisan hacks. If Bush hadn’t gone into Iraq, they’d be complaining about him focusing on Afganistan and ignoring the real danger of Saddam and his WMDs. You know, the WMDs that the Clinton administration said were a destabilizing threat in that region?
@TBlakely
Some people are so low on testosterone they compensate by pushing America to bomb every other country on the planet. In the process they have wrecked our economy. What are we going to tell our kids 20 years from now? “Hey you can’t afford a house or car but no matter because back in 2012 we blasted the living crap out of Iran for you.”
“In the process they have wrecked our economy.”
I think obama is doing it, very well, on his own.
Shocking as it may seem, the recession ended in june 2009.
The past three years?…obama owns it.
as for war spending-
record year, 2008:
185.9 billion(iraq and afghanistan).
#2-2010, 171 billion.
#3-2007, 170.9 billion.
#4-2011, 170.7 billion.
the mistake you made, duscany, is that you lament previous spending with absolutely no understanding of the present spending.
at least bush got a ‘w’.
we’ll be there another 20 years just trying to get obama a ‘T’.
if the libs do want to withdraw, I promise not to make fun of how stupid they were to pursue a land war in afghanistan. in the interest of saving us soldeirs lives, of course.
Wild exaggeration only undermines what little case you have.
GW Bush did pretty well fiscally, until we clever folks elected a Treason Legislature in 2006 (which included Barack Obama). After that, to keep them from losing the war in Iraq he had to bribe selected members. He did so.
Well, we won the war in Iraq, despite the Treason Legislature. America should be grateful to President GW Bush for that. The Surge was his decision, and it worked. Iraq’s WMD are gone (or will be with the last bit cleaned up by British contractors) or in Syria, shipped off their before the 2003 invasion. Iraq’s nuclear program was shipped to Libya, and surrendered when Saddam was captured.
I love Rummy. He helped to found Gilead, which is doing amazingly and, because it’s helping to find the cure to AIDS, naturally those who work there hate his guts. Rather like STanford students hate having the Hoover Institute attached to them, even though they can thank Hoover for a great deal of the continued prestige that the university itself no longer really deserves.
Duscany, how amazing that you yourself supplied me with exactly the right term to characterize you: astonishingly wrong headed.
Chris Matthews would love to claim you for his audience and I think he’s just about your speed.
WE have more than a little evidence that the WMDs were there. WE learned that many who masterminded 9/11 were LIVING in Baghdad quite happily.
And if nothing else, the terms of surrender have an operative word ‘terms’. Hussein had violated his terms (with the help of the UN and among some programs the corrupt Oil for Food program) nearly a dozen times. Just once was grounds to eject him from there.
We had people escaping and BEGGING us to help (funny how Darfur continually is brought up as some place we NEED to defend with apparently no problems since we don’t have oil there and they are not threatening to annihilate us)from Iraq.
16 nations all agreed that it needed to be addressed. AS did Bill Clinton.
NOt a peep about Clinton’s ‘lies’.
ANd we are even now seeing some of those WMDs traveling to other countries.
Newsflash, with a media like ours willing to hand over every secret to our enemies, it had to be clear even to you that explaining our process of discovering these WMDs and their transport to other countries would likely result in our allies and intelligence being in in harm’s way…as was the man in Pakistan who was outed as having helped us with Osama. By our media and our golf happy president who turned down the opportunity to take out Osama 7 times.
Please stop being factual. It confuses people.
BTW, there is one more reason, the one I consider the best. We were fighting a “war on terror”, not a “war on bin Laden”. It made sense to go after state sponsors. Iraq was a known sponsor. They even had a terrorist trainign center with a practice jumbo-jet. I’ve seen the aireal photo. It looks like a terrorist theme park.
Hey: Any of you eggheads out there– is Rumsfeld saying that Israel would be advised not to let USA in on their plans so as to give USA “plausible deniability” should they do something radical (or, to put it another way, do something necessary, but frowned upon by Israel haters)?
He’s saying the US would stab Israel in the back. Again.
Brian. I can’t speak for Rummy, but if I were an Israeli big guy, I’d figure anything I told Obama or his intel guys would be in Iranian hands by lunchtime.
On purpose.
Of course the Israelies should give the ranking members of the WH administration their plans! They should give each one of them a different set:
Obama gets: Monday in the kitchen with the candlestick
Panetta gets: Tuesday in the library with the revolver
Holder gets: Wed in the dining room with the rope
well…. you get the idea. It will be very instructive for everyone.
@Brian McKim
What you call “Israel haters” I call “American Firsters.” As someone born and raised in this country and who was serving in the United States Navy at the time Israel tried to sink the USS Liberty (killing 34 Americans in the process) I see nothing wrong with standing up for America first. If you feel otherwise, there are international flights leaving this country every day from an airport near you.
Ah, yes, the old America First Commitee, the pro-Nazi pre-WWII organization.
If you really are Navy, you would know that false flagging is considered legal naval (but not military) tactics. Maybe the US should have informed Israel before putting a ship in a war zone? Particularly in a fight with little margin agaisnt an enemy trying to exterminate every man, woman and child? In which the US was officially neutral? If you are upset, talk to your own government.
It was an accident. Like the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US Navy in 1988. Or was that also on purpose?
“Ah, yes, the old America First Commitee, the pro-Nazi pre-WWII organization.”
First rule of an Israeli apologist–the first thing you want to do when anyone criticizes Israel is to call them an anti-Semite so you won’t have to deal with any embarrassing issues they raise.
Of course Israel knew the Liberty was American. Previous Israeli fliers had identified it as such and it was labeled American in the Israeli combat information center. The Liberty never used a false flag. It always flew an American flag (though the first one had to be replaced with a bigger one after Israel shot it up). The USS Liberty was in international waters at all times. Yes I am mad at my government for covering up what it knew to be a deliberate attack on an American ship. But it wasn’t our president who murdered 34 four of our sailors. It was Israel that did that, knowing all the while exactly what it was doing and who it was killing.