Word: rumsfelds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hard-liners' staunch beliefs were powerfully bolstered after 9/11; they quickly concluded that the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And they were not reassured by the CIA's performance after 9/11 either. By last fall, Rumsfeld had grown so impatient with the CIA's equivocal explanations of the Iraq problem that he set up his own mini-CIA at the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans. It was hatched and designed, as a former U.S. official puts it, to get "the intelligence he wanted...
...there needed to be some sort of rallying point for the American people. I think they said it sincerely, but I also think that at the end of the day, we'll find out their interpretations of the intelligence were wrong." Another official, an Army intelligence officer, singled out Rumsfeld for massaging the facts. "Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence," says the officer. Rumsfeld told a radio audience last week that the "war was not waged under any false pretense." And an aide flat-out rejects the idea that intelligence was hyped to support the invasion...
...take months or perhaps years to find them--an explanation that has the added virtue of giving them a lot more time. G.I.s have searched only about a third of the 900 suspected sites across the Iraqi countryside. Even the Administration's positions are in flux. Saddam, according to Rumsfeld, could have destroyed the weapons right before the war or even moved them out of the country. "I don't know the answer," Rumsfeld said last week, "and I suspect we'll find out a lot more information as we go along and keep interrogating people...
...breezy words by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last week--"It is also possible that [the Iraqis] decided they would destroy [their WMD] prior to a conflict"--have pulled the rug from under Blair's argument and caused a wave of anti-Blair commentaries. While Bush freely tossed out multiple arguments for war, including alleged Iraqi links with al-Qaeda and the righteousness of changing an "evil" regime, by Blair's tight logic, no WMD meant no war could be legitimate. That could spell trouble for Tony...
...have that luxury. Only 42% of British voters approve of his job performance. As always, Blair will reserve any criticisms he may have of Washington for the secure telephone line to the Oval Office. But not even British understatement could keep his aides from venting their regret that Rumsfeld had ever opened his mouth--and from praying that those WMD finally turn up. --By J.F.O. McAllister/London