Donald Rumsfeld won't accept US responsibility for creation of 'Daesh'

[webfact]

Donald Rumsfeld Still Won't Accept US Responsibility for Creation of Daesh

NEW YORK: -- Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was entirely serious when, in an interview with Stephen Colbert, he made the absurd assertion that the instability in the Middle East is due to the Shia-Sunni conflict and not the war in Iraq, which he almost single-handedly initiated.

On Monday evening’s episode of The Late Show, host Colbert asked Rumsfeld whether the rise of Daesh was predicted during the planning of the Iraq war, as either a “worst-case scenario, or a beyond-worse-case scenario.”

​Rumsfeld paused for a moment and answered, “I think the disorder in the entire region and the conflict between the Sunnis and the Shia is something that generally people had not anticipated.”

Full story: http://sputniknews.com/us/20160128/1033814191/rumsfeld-colbert-daesh-iraq.html

-- Sputnik 2016-01-28

[Seastallion]

Ha! Rummy says that the fact that Iraq had used chemical weapons and had ignored several UN resolutions that the invasion was justified.

It will be interesting to see what defence is raised in the future of another rogue state that continually ignores and defies UN resolutions (and has used chemical weapons).

Nonetheless...if Rumsfeld says the US is not responsible for daesh, then the truth must be the opposite.

[Rob8891]

That's be a 'yes', then.

[Gsxrnz]

Sounds like non-denial denial to me.

[dexterm]

​

Rumsfeld paused for a moment and answered, “I think the disorder in the entire region and the conflict between the Sunnis and the Shia is something that generally people had not anticipated.”

What a pity that neither Rumsfeld not his neo con advisors had simply consulted Wikipedia to help him anticipate a possible conflict once he had created a power vacuum by the unnecessary invasion of Iraq.....

"Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iraq faced the prospect of régime change from two Shi'ite factions (Dawa and SCIRI) which aspired to model Iraq on its neighbour Iran as a Shia theocracy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein#Paramilitary_and_police_organizations

and hadn't he noticed that Sunni Saddam had recently fought a war against Shia Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#1980:_Iraqi_invasion

or that his Sunni forces had massacred more than 60,000 Shi'ites

In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed full-scale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq#Documented_human_rights_violations_1979.E2.80.932003

He shudda gone to Specsavers.

Edited January 28, 2016 by dexterm

[khwaibah]

Birds of a feather flock to gather.. Rumsfeld, Chaney and the leader of the pack W.

[GeorgesAbitbol]

It could be funny if their stupid decisions didn t mess with a whole region, killed thousands, if not millions because of their stupid greed

Hussein as well as Ghadaffi were dictators but were not religious and prevented the biggots to rise..

Thanks Bush, Thanks Blair, Thanks Sarkozy

[NickJ]

He spins when he walks........

[Chicog]

He is a war criminal and should be treated as such.

[dunroaming]

I was one of the people shouting at Blair at the time along with over a million other protesting brits. It was illegal, unjustified, a terrible waste of lives and destabilising for the whole region. Blair is still a very much hated figure in the UK and rightly so. Will he or Bush ever be held to account? Of course not. The only crumb of comfort is that the Iraq fiasco is their legacy and will stay that way forever.

[reptile91602]

When I heard that Colbert had Rumpsfeld on I was deeply apprehensive. Why would he have that moron on his show. I'm glad he asked a few harder questions for him but he should have come right and out and told him he really f ed things up for the world and left it at that. Rump, Cheney and the other dick Nixon. the worse of the worse. Bush was just an idiot.

[GinBoy2]

The creation of ISIS, ISIL, Daesh has many parents.

Yes, the US invasion of Iraq for sure destabilized the region, which certainly created the genesis of isis.

But go back further. The whole region was held together by dictators; Saddam, Assad and to a lesser extent the Hashimites in Jordon.

Why? Because the states they ruled where never viable. Artificial creations of post WW1 Imperialists.

The states/countries they created out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire were based on nothing more than arbitrary lines lines drawn up in London & Paris driven by their own imperial quest for territorial power and influence.

HW Bush, unlike his erstwhile son was a real politik guy, and understood, if you wanted hold together these artificial creations, it could only happen thought he 'hold your nose' acceptance of brutal dictators.

So here we are. The sleeping time bomb left by Skyes & Picot, plus a host of early 20th Imperialists is finally playing out.

The states we currently know, Iraq, Syria will at the end of the day all disappear, and something more organic, akin the the old Ottoman provinces will prevail, and ultimately be more sustainable.

You can look to central Europe where the equally bizarre creations of Yugoslavia & Czechoslovakia after WW1 also disintegrated, I just wish it could play out more like the Czech Slovak amicable divorce

The interim however will be bloody and chaotic.

Was Rumsfeld to blame? He can take his place amongst a century of guilty parties....history will decide where he ranks!

Edited January 28, 2016 by GinBoy2

[alfalfa19]

he looks like a smug demon

[Ulic]

Rummy.....everything we did was great........we may have made a minor mistake but

we made all the right calls. We did nothing wrong.

[Chicog]

Well who hasn't forgotten that when Rumsfeld was telling us what a threat to world peace Saddam was, this photograph was circulating.

And the joke of the day was that America knew that Saddam had WMDs because they had all the receipts....

[up-country_sinclair]

What was Secretary Rumsfeld doing Colbert's talk show? Was he promoting a book or memoir?

[GinBoy2]

What was Secretary Rumsfeld doing Colbert's talk show? Was he promoting a book or memoir?

Worst than that...he was hawking his new video game!

The mind boggles

[JohnDodd]

The same guy that disclosed that $2-3 Trillion was unaccounted for the day before "Pearl Habour 2", and the Auditors who were working the accounts tracing the massive rip-off just happened to be in a room where the " Plane" struck, Nice Guy,

[Rancid]

It is a sign of the times that neither financial nor political criminals ever see the jail time they deserve, nor does the media ever go after them. The rule of law always had some visual problems however of late it is completely blind. The law is meant to be one of the pillars of civilization, seems the foundations are getting pretty weak.

[craigt3365]

Radical Islamists have been around for hundreds of years. Yes, the Iraq war helped to stoke the flames, but they'd flare up almost no matter what happened. The Muslim brotherhood has been around for some 70 years. A long time before Rumsfeld's era.

[dexterm]

Radical Islamists have been around for hundreds of years. Yes, the Iraq war helped to stoke the flames, but they'd flare up almost no matter what happened. The Muslim brotherhood has been around for some 70 years. A long time before Rumsfeld's era.

So, back to the OP, ....who let the dogs out?

[sgtsabai]

Rummy was positive there were chemical weapons because the US gov't gave them to Saddam (see pic above) for use against Iran and later the Kurds, after we abandoned them. He just failed to realize that Saddam used them all up against the Kurds. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but never, every AlCIAda. Iraq was a secular country, as was Iran before and even during the brutal reign of the Shaw, who was hated by the Iranians. Yes, it was the US and BP that overthrew the legitimate elected government of Iran (can you say oil?) and installed the Shaw. Wonder why they don't like us very much, ah duh? Bush et al are war criminals and they are the ones that belong in GitMo, for ever. How about a Nuremberg trial?

[JHolmesJr]

Watch errol norris' documentary on this turd....Unknown Knowns....a lying scumbag he is...and will be...till the bitter end.

He was cheneys boss in the ford administration and cheney repaid the favor when he became veep. Together, they pulled the wool over the idiot bush kid.

[craigt3365]

Radical Islamists have been around for hundreds of years. Yes, the Iraq war helped to stoke the flames, but they'd flare up almost no matter what happened. The Muslim brotherhood has been around for some 70 years. A long time before Rumsfeld's era.

So, back to the OP, ....who let the dogs out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism

Extremism within Islam goes back to the 7th century to the Kharijites. From their essentially political position, they developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to Takfir, whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death

More recent history:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/modern.html

The colonial era, failed post-colonial attempts at state formation, and the creation of Israel engendered a series of Marxist and anti-Western transformations and movements throughout the Arab and Islamic world. The growth of these nationalist and revolutionary movements, along with their view that terrorism could be effective in reaching political goals, generated the first phase of modern international terrorism.

In the late 1960s Palestinian secular movements such as Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict. Following Israel's 1967 defeat of Arab forces, Palestinian leaders realized that the Arab world was unable to militarily confront Israel. At the same time, lessons drawn from revolutionary movements in Latin America, North Africa, Southeast Asia as well as during the Jewish struggle against Britain in Palestine, saw the Palestinians move away from classic guerrilla, typically rural-based, warfare toward urban terrorism. Radical Palestinians took advantage of modern communication and transportation systems to internationalize their struggle. They launched a series of hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, and shootings, culminating in the kidnapping and subsequent deaths of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic games.

These Palestinian groups became a model for numerous secular militants, and offered lessons for subsequent ethnic and religious movements. Palestinians created an extensive transnational extremist network -- tied into which were various state sponsors such as the Soviet Union, certain Arab states, as well as traditional criminal organizations. By the end of the 1970s, the Palestinian secular network was a major channel for the spread of terrorist techniques worldwide.

[craigt3365]

Another interesting read. Worth the time:

http://www.hoover.org/research/religious-sources-islamic-terrorism

Modern international Islamist terrorism is a natural offshoot of twentieth-century Islamic fundamentalism. The “Islamic Movement” emerged in the Arab world and British-ruled India as a response to the dismal state of Muslim society in those countries: social injustice, rejection of traditional mores, acceptance of foreign domination and culture. It perceives the malaise of modern Muslim societies as having strayed from the “straight path” (as-sirat al-mustaqim) and the solution to all ills in a return to the original mores of Islam. The problems addressed may be social or political: inequality, corruption, and oppression. But in traditional Islam — and certainly in the worldview of the Islamic fundamentalist — there is no separation between the political and the religious. Islam is, in essence, both religion and regime (din wa-dawla) and no area of human activity is outside its remit. Be the nature of the problem as it may, “Islam is the solution.”

.........................................

Until the 1980s, attempts to mobilize Muslims all over the world for a jihad in one area of the world (Palestine, Kashmir) were unsuccessful. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a watershed event, as it revived the concept of participation in jihad to evict an “infidel” occupier from a Muslim country as a “personal duty” (fard ’ein) for every capable Muslim. The basis of this duty derives from the “irreversibility” of Islamic identity both for individual Muslims (thus, capital punishment for “apostates” — e.g., Salman Rushdie) and for Muslim territories. Therefore, any land (Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Spain) that had once been under the sway of Islamic law may not revert to control by any other law. In such a case, it becomes the “personal duty” of all Muslims in the land to fight a jihad to liberate it.

[Seastallion]

When I heard that Colbert had Rumpsfeld on I was deeply apprehensive. Why would he have that moron on his show. I'm glad he asked a few harder questions for him but he should have come right and out and told him he really f ed things up for the world and left it at that. Rump, Cheney and the other dick Nixon. the worse of the worse. Bush was just an idiot.

He did actually start off with a jibe when he talked about there being yet another Donald (Trump) who can never admit when he was wrong.

[spidermike007]

Has Rumdum ever accepted responsibility for any disaster he has created? Has he ever accepted responsibility for any negative outcome of his manufactured war in Iraq? Some could make an argument that there were valid reasons to go into Afghanistan. But, Iraq? There was never one good reason to go in there. It was all about rebuilding the Middle East in the image of the Neocons. It was always about erasing Mesopotamian culture from the history books. It was always about oil and power.

Rumdum is not the introspective type. Expecting him to accept responsibility for his actions, would be a bit like expecting Obama to run a transparent administration, or close Gitmo. It would be a bit like expecting Clinton (either one) to be honest. It would be a bit like expecting Trump to behave in a dignified and humble manner. Just not gonna happen.

Rumdum is a freak, a liar, a power hungry clown, and a blight on the Bush Administration. He was personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. In a truly civilized world this man would spend the rest of his life in prison for war crimes.