Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Alaska this weekend to check out A U.S. missile defense system and to meet with his soviet counterpart over N.Korea and other issues. He also dedicated a memorial to the Alaska-Siberia lend lease program and to meet with military families stationed at Ft. Greely near Fairbanks. Yes, Rummy is a busy man.
The memorial commemorates Russian and American aviators and support troops responsible for ferrying more than 5,000 American-built warplanes from the Midwest through Canada to Fairbanks, where Russian pilots then flew the planes to Siberia during World War II. (AP Photo)
"This is one of the ground based interceptor missiles at the missile defense site at Ft. Greeley.
After his first look inside the nerve center of the U.S. missile defense system, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday sounded a note of caution about expectations that interceptors poised in underground silos here would work in the event of a missile attack by North Korea.
Rumsfeld climbed down a steel ladder into one of 10 silos that house single 54-foot-long missile interceptors. If ordered by President Bush or a successor, one or more of the rockets would blast into the sky and race at more than 18,000 mph to launch a small "kill vehicle" at an enemy warhead as it soared through space."
Yesterday at the Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada, Rumsfeld had a few remarks for the media:
"Rumsfeld was asked whether the criticism he draws as Pentagon chief and a leading advocate of the war in Iraq is an impediment to performing his job. He said it was not and he knows from history that wars are normally unpopular with many Americans. "I expect that," he said. "I understand that."
"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.
"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
"They can lie with impunity," he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct."
Rumsfeld was right on target and today he delivered the truth on those who appease terrorism and the Islamofascists who produce it. He doesn't pull punches:
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."
In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral and intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.
Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.
"I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism" he said.
Rumsfeld recalled a string of recent terrorist attacks, from the Sept. 11 attacks to bombings in Bali, London and Madrid, and said it should be obvious to anyone that terrorists must be confronted, not appeased.
"But it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons," he said, adding that part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.
He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor."
Why is that?? Our media hypes war negatives and HIDES SOLDIERS LIKE SGT. 1ST CLASS PAUL R. SMITH AND MEDALS OF HONOR??
Rumsfeld is a man that knows the score. He remembers what the media has forgotten.
And despite constant democratic criticism, you've never heard a cross word come out of Rummy's mouth. Always the gentleman, his words to Hillary Clinton after an attack on his abilities as defense secretary and Clinton's call for his resignation were:
"Oh My Goodness"
Maybe he was thinking of Hillary's bust.
"I have never painted a rosy picture," he said. "I've been very measured in my words, and you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic."
Yes, Rummy's got class in the face of all the rancor and criticism.
Something sorely missing in today's political world especially among democrats who basically have resorted to whining, a lack of politness, personal attacks and NO POLICY apparently making it a practice to complain about what they have no constuctive answer for themselves.
Congradulations Rummy. You speak the truth and America needs to listen instead of feeding the Islamofascists who spawn terror.
.jpg)
Comments