Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which parts of the world we want to be in immediate contact with.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I believe the American people spoke loud and clear to the Bush Administration in yesterday's election that they disapprove of the current direction in the war in Iraq. As a result, the President wasted no time in dumping Secretary Rumsfeld.
The standard rumor at the time was that Rumsfeld, as chief of staff, had persuaded President Ford to appoint George H.W. Bush as director of Central Intelligence, assuming that that got rid of a potential competitor for the presidency.
This mass destructive weapons were sold to Iraqi government by the United States. And Mr. Rumsfeld has been one of the man responsible for this sale, for this bargain, for this market.
This question about Iraq has gotten personal.
Could it be that all those reports coming from our own intelligence that Bush ignored was right all along? Could it be that the UN was right all along?
When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won't tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, 'Well, you know: It's secret.'
President Bush and his administration have tried to pull the wool over our eyes and distract the public from this possibly illegal domestic spying scandal.
Right after the tragedy, President Bush asked Americans to get on with their lives and we did.
I'm a professor of national security studies, and I know a lot more about fighting than Rumsfeld does.
I can't think of a time that the U.S. government asked us or instructed us not to report or air something.