Robert Gates: As Bad as Rumsfeld?

By Ray McGovern
November 19, 2008

"As Bad As Rumsfeld?" The title jars, doesn't it? The more so, since Defense Secretary Robert Gates found his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, such an easy act to follow.

But the jarring part reflects how malnourished most of us are on the thin gruel served up by the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).

Over the past few months, Defense Secretary Gates has generated accolades from FCM pundits — like the Washington Post's David Ignatius — that read like letters of recommendation to graduate school.

This comes as no surprise to those of us – including his former colleagues at the CIA’s analytical division – familiar with Gates's dexterity in orchestrating his own advancement. What DOES come as a surprise is the recurring rumor that President-elect Obama may decide to put new wine in old wineskins by letting Gates stay.

What can Barack Obama be thinking?

Watch 03:52 into the video

What was Donald Rumsfeld doing on the Pentagon lawn just after the attack? Why was the head of defense of the hole nation helping to carry away casualties while the country was still under attack?

The 9/11 Key Question: Why was Donald Rumsfeld not at his command post?

Source: zero911movie.com

investigate911.se

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2008/10/exclusive-rumsfeld-updat...

Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army's secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, "Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: "Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document." The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

feedback, ideas, link/logic/fact checking, etc. appreciated. This one is too long, i think, and i still could've put a lot more stuff into it, but my goal is mainly to introduce info to new people and interest them in following the links, i'm just summarizing research others have done.

9/11 Truth, Part 6 of 11: Air Defense “Failures”, Simultaneous War Games & Continuity of Government
http://911reports.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/911-truth-part-6-of-11-air-defense-“failures”-simultaneous-war-games-continuity-of-government/

Click here for all the articles in the 9/11 Truth Overview Series
http://911reports.wordpress.com/911-truth-overview-series/

OpEdNews.com http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8800

This article summarizes some of the events concerning the 4 hijacked flights on 9/11, provides information on standard air defense procedures and warnings received prior to 9/11 and gives a brief overview of the multiple war games and military operations surrounding 9/11, including Continuity of Government planning. Links are provided for more in depth research.

Air Defense “Failures”:

Flight 11:

9/11 Truth, Part 5- The Bush Administration on the Day of 9/11: Incompetence or Intent?
http://911reports.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/911-truth-part-5-the-bush-adm...

Click here for all the articles in the: 9/11 Truth Overview Series
http://911reports.wordpress.com/911-truth-overview-series/

This article is a brief overview of some of the chain of events on the morning of 9/11, and the actions and inactions on the part of Bush Administration officials.

September 11, 2001 came after a “summer of threat” in which George W. Bush (and Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush Administration principals), the FBI, CIA and Secret Service received increasingly dire warnings from counterterrorism experts. These included the August 6 PDB, which warned of “patterns of suspicious activity in [the US] consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

By special request.

So the lid of "incompetence" is banged desperately down on the "botched" investigation into what even the corporate media cannot deny was an unprecedented false-flag WMD attack on the US Congress and the media itself commenced within a week of 9/11.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5276220
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121478249006714421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The Wall Street Journal reminds us that "9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a military tribunal he was "directly in charge" of "managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others", and concludes that "this fiasco shows the limits of bureaucratic law enforcement in fighting terror."

But as the neocon media assets strain to disguise an obvious cover-up as the need to remove more "gloves", there remains the ineradicable stench of another "coincidence" involving one Lt. Col. Philip Zack.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/01/26/assaad/index.html

Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11: An enemy within

By Matthew Everett
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 30, 2007, 00:27

What was Rumsfeld doing on 9/11? He deserted his post. He disappeared. The country was under attack. Where was the guy who controls America’s defense? Out of touch! --A senior White House official

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered its worst attack since Pearl Harbor. Yet, as evidence shows, the country was in many ways undefended for the entire duration of the assault. The Air Force was nowhere to be seen until it was too late. [1] The commander in chief of the armed forces, President George W. Bush, continued with a pre-planned photo op at a school in Florida, only leaving the place at 9:35, just before the time the Pentagon was struck. [2] The acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was on Capitol Hill. Despite seeing the television reports of the World Trade Center after it was first hit, he continued with a scheduled meeting there, and supposedly was not notified when the second plane hit at 9:03. He therefore did not head back to the Pentagon until around the time it too was hit, and only joined the critical air threat conference call shortly before 10 a.m. By that time, the attacks were nearly over. [3]

Furthermore, new evidence shows that for the critical two hours in which the attacks occurred, the country was effectively without a secretary of defense. An analysis of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s actions on 9/11 reveals several occasions when he was alerted to the attacks that were taking place. Each time, if he were not already doing so, he should have leapt into action and assumed his responsibilities in coordinating a crisis response, and helping to protect the people of America. Yet, instead, his responses were consistent: He did nothing.

Continued...
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2026.shtml

The Three Amigos on 9/11
New examination of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld whereabouts on 9/11 turns up many troubling questions

James Corbett
The Corbett Report
5 June, 2008

The Corbett Report has just released the final installment in a three-part YouTube documentary series seeking to highlight some of the bizarre facts surrounding the movements and whereabouts of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on the day of 9/11. The three videos can be watched in the players below.

Where Was Rumsfeld on 9/11?

Monday May 19, 2008

Alex Jones talks to Presidential Candidate and Congressman Ron Paul, author of the New York Times Best Selling Book The Revolution: A Manifesto about the upcoming GOP convention, his take on the field of presidential candidates and the impact of the collapsing dollar on politics. Alex also asks Dr Paul for his opinion about Rumsfeld's comment (clip is played) that perhpas a new terror attack was needed to "get everyone energized".

Source:
Alex Jones Infowars.com

LEADING TO WAR

Insider: Iraq Attack Was Preemptive

(CBS) The name Douglas Feith may not mean much to most Americans, but to students of the Iraq War and historians already studying it, he is one of the main architects.

From 2001 to 2005, Feith was under secretary of defense for policy and the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, intimately involved both pre-war strategy and post-war planning. His boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, called Feith one of the most brilliant individuals in government but he has also been a lightning rod for criticism and a magnet for blame.

By, Cheri Roberts-Piper MTR News

September 11th, 2001 could prove, in the end, to have been another in the long list of False Flag Operations for the history books, the jury is still out. However, there is precedent for more False Flags to come since the events of that horrible day…

False Flag Operations have played into world politics for decades if not centuries, igniting fear upon a citizenry to create a fervent patriotism among its countrymen in order to incite nations to war. The Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, the Reichstag Fire and the unexecuted Operation Northwoods, are just a few broadly known, factual, and well-documented False Flag Operations in our History.

Those examples, to most, are familiar, but what is a False Flag Operation exactly?

“False flag Operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities”.

And “False Flag Operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time”.

Thanks to www.cooperativeresearch.org

1945-1975: NSA’s Operation Shamrock Secretly Monitors US Citizens’ Overseas Communications

A very good video that everyone should see. Just another expose on the lies coming from Washington D.C. & their cronies

There are a lot of people who LIE and GET AWAY WITH IT

Don't to be to sure.

Dont you just wanna punch this guy in the face?? And the publics reaction!! they clap him!!
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=56f_1188720689

During a recent Congressional hearing on the "friendly fire" death of football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004, Representative John Mica (R-Fla) gave new details about an 8 o'clock breakfast meeting held at the Pentagon the morning of 9/11 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mica told the hearing, which was attended by Rumsfeld:

I think on my dying day, I'll remember September 11th, when I was with Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon for breakfast that morning. He invited me and half-a-dozen members [of Congress], I think, over to the Pentagon. And the subject of the conversation Donald Rumsfeld was interested in was: the military had been downsized during the '90s since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And what we were going to do about [the] situation is we had another--the word you [i.e. Rumsfeld] used was "incident," I remember, in the conversation, sitting in the room right off of his office for coffee that morning. And he was trying to make certain that we were prepared for something that we might not expect. [1]

In a blog entry about "International Terrorism", I mentioned the segment that Adam Curtis produced for his documentary film The Power of Nightmares. Here is the specific segment, featuring a familiar cast of characters telling us a familiar tale: "A terrible danger exists outside of our borders that we must confront and destroy because it seeks nothing less than the destruction of the Western way of life!" Remove the "Red Menace" from the Cold War fear paradigm, and insert "Radical Islam" and you have very quickly spanned Western foreign policy over the past 3 decades from the Neoconservative point of view. I might disagree with Ron Paul on some things, but when it comes to the Neocons, Paul nails+it.

So, when the same pack of fabricators are telling us a similar pack of lies about Iran, etc., why should anyone believe them?

I think they call it... recidivism.

As the following two new entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline show, early in 2001, the new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was regularly talking about the danger of surprise attacks, and was expressing particular interest in the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld "routinely handed out or recommended" Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

This is nervous breakdown material for Bushbots.

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?hp

Robert Scheer wrote about it at Huffpost:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/bushs-pakistan-paradox_b_557...

In a speech titled "Paul Nitze's Legacy: For a New World", delivered on April 15, 2004 before the Aspen Institute, Paul Wolfowitz revealed that he and Donald Rumsfeld had lunch with members of the 9/11 Commission before the report was complete:

"When Don Rumsfeld and I had lunch with members of the 9/11 commission recently, one member asked what could they do to ensure that their report would make a real difference, that it would be read five or 10 years from now, instead of just filed away on a dusty shelf. I realize now that I gave them a pretty tall order. What I told them, basically, was to write something similar to George Kennan's long telegram or Paul Nitze's NSC-68. I told them that, rarely to my knowledge, has anyone other than historians with a specific interest in the subject, gone back to read the report of the Pearl Harbor Commission. NSC-68, on the other hand, is still studied in colleges and universities, including colleges for strategists like the war colleges of our military services or our National Defense University."

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11

Regarding Criminal Mastermind, Donald Rumsfeld

Revised May 30, 2007

By Donald Rumsfeld's own admission, he was unaware of any threats to the Pentagon -- the building where he was located during the September 11th attacks -- until an aircraft crashed into the side of it, and he ran out "into the smoke" to see if it might be a

"A bomb? I had no idea." (ABC News This Week, Interview 9/16/01).

Well, that's a pretty tall tale by any standard. The New York Times reported that by 8:13am, the FAA was aware of the first hijacking out of Boston. The Pentagon explosion, which Donald Rumsfeld claimed he had "no idea," did not occur until approximately 9:37am, nearly an hour and a half later, this after two of the tallest buildings in the world were devastated. Note that a plane hijacked out of Boston can reach Washington D.C. as easily as it can reach New York City.

It was reported that Pentagon personnel were indeed aware of the threats to their security, and they took security measures on that morning. But not the "Secretary of Defense."

Source: onlinejournal.com

By Matthew Everett
May 30, 2007, 00:27

What was Rumsfeld doing on 9/11? He deserted his post. He disappeared. The country was under attack. Where was the guy who controls America’s defense? Out of touch! --A senior White House official

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered its worst attack since Pearl Harbor. Yet, as evidence shows, the country was in many ways undefended for the entire duration of the assault. The Air Force was nowhere to be seen until it was too late. [1] The commander in chief of the armed forces, President George W. Bush, continued with a pre-planned photo op at a school in Florida, only leaving the place at 9:35, just before the time the Pentagon was struck. [2] The acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was on Capitol Hill. Despite seeing the television reports of the World Trade Center after it was first hit, he continued with a scheduled meeting there, and supposedly was not notified when the second plane hit at 9:03. He therefore did not head back to the Pentagon until around the time it too was hit, and only joined the critical air threat conference call shortly before 10 a.m. By that time, the attacks were nearly over. [3]

Furthermore, new evidence shows that for the critical two hours in which the attacks occurred, the country was effectively without a secretary of defense. An analysis of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s actions on 9/11 reveals several occasions when he was alerted to the attacks that were taking place. Each time, if he were not already doing so, he should have leapt into action and assumed his responsibilities in coordinating a crisis response, and helping to protect the people of America. Yet, instead, his responses were consistent: He did nothing.

In this hour-long lecture recorded at the Arizona 9/11 Accountability Conference on February 25th, 2007, researcher Peter Dale Scott presents a host of contradicting accounts describing the actions of Vice President Cheney on the morning of 9/11, and how the 9/11 Commission cherry-picked its way through this minefield of contradictions, including contradictions by the Vice President himself!

Scott points out timeline gaps where simultaneously, Cheney & Rumsfeld can't be accounted for, and suggests that it is no coincidence that these old Cold Warriors were nowhere to be seen at a critical juncture on that morning. Rather, it's probable that they were discussing a variety of things, including highly classified procedures dealing with Continuity of Government and that this has been the springboard for the assault on the Constitution, and the roll-out of macabre plans like the establishment of KBR+detention+camps that go without comment or scrutiny by the Congress.

Scott calls for the questioning of Cheney under oath regarding his actions on the morning of 9/11, and suggests that this could lead to his impeachment.

Mr. St. Clair,

I commend you for openly disagreeing with your co-editor. As global temperature does change all by itself without human intervention -- and I have never seen an accurate accounting to date of the natural vs. manmade contributions to temperature, I'm not 100% convinced that Cockburn is wrong about the reasons for climate change.

I am 100% sure that he's wrong about September 11th. Your own website has supported the allegations of Sibel Edmonds and several others who spoke of protected drug smuggling which has financed terrorism, and probably still does today.

If I could prove that there were indeed laws broken intentionally, to the benefit of the 9/11 terrorists -- would it matter over at Counterpunch? Cockburn doesn't seem willing to look at any evidence, no matter the source, no matter the damning implications.

I can prove criminal behavior by US government operatives easily in a dozen ways. I'll cite two incontrovertible cases.

Al Mindhar and Al Hazmi

You may remember DoD staffer, Stephen Cambone, during a meeting with Rumsfeld on 9/11 jotted down "best info fast...judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]." What we weren't told about at the time was that he also jotted down, "Hard to get a good case." To me, Rummy acted like a child with a $1,000,000 gift certificate to Toys R' Us. "I want that one, and that one, and that one." Certainly not someone concerned about the well-being of Americans affected by that tragic day. More like someone waiting for the opportunity. - Jon

NBC's Pentagon reporter weighs in on Tenet book

Source: projo.com

By Tom Mooney
Journal Staff Writer
12:36 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 2, 2007

PROVIDENCE - Just hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush administration officials began talking of including Iraq in any retaliatory attack, even though all indications pointed at al-Qaida as the guilty party.

This is an interesting short video — "The NeoConservative Manifesto".

Very well done, by Barry from http://www.knife-party.com

Also mirrored for posterity here: ftp://ftp.die.net/mirror/misc/barry.mov

(NOTE: There is an error in the following. Please see the correction in the comments below.)

Andrew Cockburn, I was going to challenge you to a debate, but I see now you do an even better job of dismantling yourself.

One week you attack 9/11 skepticism using every cheap shot worthy of a Limbaugh, reducing it all to a laughable caricature that you yourself must recognize as unfair. (The families who lobbied for the 9/11 Commission ended up condemning it? Really? How would a busy fellow like you know that?)

The next week, you try to compensate - for the lost subscriptions, perhaps? - by reaching for the "Art Students," as though the only intelligence agencies who could have known that 9/11 was in the works would have had to be Israeli.

Now you present this great profile of Rumsfeld in the 1990s, the little emperor of a self-appointed Shadow Government who enjoyed nothing more than playing Strangelove in a bunker, firing off all his missiles and killing everyone. (READ MORE...)

"It should be remembered here that Rummy spent the duration of the attacks on 9-11 in his office at the Pentagon: without even trying to communicate with his department"never mind the fact, that all of this blood that spilled after the first tower, was by law, his responsibility. Is this one of the reasons that Rice is reluctant to testify under oath? Because when this gets out that the Bushites violated their own twisted revisions of national defense procedures, and then dropped the ball completely: then there may well be a demand for heads to roll!"

"...in light of current events now unfolding from London to the Korean peninsula (the Pacific fleet is on a heightened alert status), coupled with the impending attacks upon Iran and possibly Syria: Someone "big needs to locate the Secretary of War and track his every move"before and during whatever is about to happen"because according to the documents above
it will be Robert M. Gates who shall be responsible for protecting America, not the President or the VP, nor will it be Chertoff and HOMELAND Security. As a matter of interest, either the president or the vice president is supposed to remain in the country at all times"especially during moments of high international tensions"so why are they both going to be abroad at the same time NOW?

The Chain of Command is Busted!
Jim Kirwan
2-23-7

http://www.rense.com/general75/busted.htm

The Vice-President is on an American aircraft carrier off Japan, and the Decider has a scheduled trip that will take him out-of-the-country. He,ll probably be aboard Air Force One, but that plane is only used to collect money"as an extension of his political machine"it is doubtful that he could ever even pretend to operate the world's most sophisticated flying-combat-operations-center that Air Force One was designed to be. So what's the problem?