Fw: Amy Goodman interviews

[drjb at mindspring.com]

Thanks ED

-----Original Message-----
>From: edwschreiber at earthlink.net
>Sent: Mar 12, 2007 1:39 PM
>To: list at grouptalkweb.org
>Subject: Fw: Amy Goodman interviews
>
>Greetings Colleagues,
>
>I just got a copy of an interview by Amy Goodman.
>As you know she is the keynote speaker at our ASGPP Meeting next month.
>
>As an aside I find it striking that the ASGPP would have Amy as a keynote speaker.
>
>Why?  Because in my view there is absolutley no one in the United States more able
>to talk with intelligence, clear thought, honesty and integrity about the world situation
>we face and our role (US) in it than Amy Goodman.
>
>The courage it took to make the decision to have her is to be given a standing ovation in my world
>view.
>
>Ed Schreiber
>
>-----Forwarded Message-----
>>From: doug wilson <dougw at rowecenter.org>
>>Sent: Mar 12, 2007 1:22 PM
>>To: Doug Wilson <dougw at rowecenter.org>
>>Subject: Amy Goodman interviews investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn,l who goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before told stories about Donald Rumsfeld. 
>>
>>AlterNet
>>
>>
>>The Catastrophic Legacy of Donald Rumsfeld
>>
>>
>>By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
>>Posted on March 12, 2007, Printed on March 12, 2007
>>http://www.alternet.org/story/49109/
>>
>>
>>The public scrutiny of Rumsfeld culminated in his resignation last year
>>after the Republicans lost control of Congress. Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall,
>>and Catastrophic Legacy, a new book by investigative journalist Andrew
>>Cockburn goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before told stories about
>>Donald Rumsfeld. Relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in
>>the Pentagon and the White House, it chronicles Rumsfeld's early career as
>>an Illinois congressman to his rise in the Nixon White House. From his
>>tenure as CEO of pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle to his decisions as
>>Defense Secretary in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
>>
>>Amy Goodman: We turn now to a new book by investigative journalist Andrew
>>Cockburn, which goes behind the scenes to reveal never-before-told stories
>>about Donald Rumsfeld, relying on sources that include high-ranking
>>officials in the Pentagon and White House. It chronicles Rumsfeld's early
>>career as an Illinois Congress member to his rise in the Nixon White House.
>>From his tenure as CEO of pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle to his
>>decisions as Defense Secretary in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Author
>>Andrew Cockburn, joins from us Washington, D.C., writer and lecturer on
>>defense and national security affairs and author of five nonfiction books.
>>... As we talk about Scooter Libby and whether he was the fall guy for a
>>higher-up, namely Vice President Dick Cheney, why don't we start off by
>>talking about Rumsfeld's relationship with Dick Cheney?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, it's a very -- you know, it's a key relationship in the
>>history of our times. It goes back to the Nixon White House, when Cheney
>>went to work for Rumsfeld, when Rumsfeld first moved over there from the
>>Congress. And he was regarded in those days by anyone who encountered them
>>as very much Rumsfeld's flunky. And he rose with Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld put him
>>out to pasture when he went off for a job in Europe for a couple years, but
>>then brought him back as his deputy in the Ford White House.
>>
>>But then, actually, interestingly, I discovered, to my surprise, that during
>>the years in the relative wilderness for Rumsfeld, when he was out of office
>>and decided to run for president, which he always thought he was the person
>>most fitted for that job, in 1988, he called on Cheney and said, you know,
>>"Report for duty, Cheney." And Cheney, by this time, had his own political
>>career and refused. And Rumsfeld took tremendous umbrage at this and went
>>into a deep sulk and actually wouldn't speak to Cheney for some years. And
>>then, of course, the partnership was reforged with disastrous effect this
>>time around.
>>
>>Goodman: And what about Rumsfeld's relationship with George Bush, Sr.? Why
>>did the President, the former president, dislike Rumsfeld so intensely?
>>
>>Cockburn: Because it goes back to -- they were basically rivals, first of
>>all, at the court of Richard Nixon, because they were each sort of proteges
>>of Nixon, and each found ways to court Nixon's favor. But then, in the Ford
>>administration, they were rivals for the slot. They both wanted to be picked
>>by Ford to run with him in 1976. And Bush suspected, entirely correctly,
>>that Rumsfeld had sabotaged his chances by getting him made head of the CIA,
>>which was thought -- I mean, wrongly, as it turned out -- but was thought to
>>have politically neutralized Bush for the rest of his career.
>>
>>And the loathing continued. I mean, Rumsfeld used to give very sort of cruel
>>imitations of Bush. He would entertain dinner parties with his renditions of
>>Bush's style of speaking. And then, when Bush was elected president,
>>Rumsfeld applied for a job as ambassador to Japan. And Bush wrote across the
>>letter, "No. This will never happen. G.B." So, it's -- you know, it's
>>endured.
>>
>>Goodman: So what does it say about George W. Bush, that one of the few men
>>who were in that circle that, as you put it, the former president and George
>>W. Bush's father, of course, despised, that he made one of his top key
>>people in his own administration, George W. Bush?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, isn't that very interesting? I mean, it tells us a lot about
>>the relationship between the two Bushes. You know, we've heard this before,
>>that there was an antipathy certainly on the younger Bush's side towards his
>>father. I mean, who knows? Unless we get him on the couch one day, we'll not
>>really find out where this came from. But it's certainly there. I mean, you
>>know, there's so much anecdotal evidence of him expressing resentment -- I
>>mean, his famous remark that he didn't pay attention to his own father, but
>>he answered to a higher father, as he told Bob Woodward. So it's there. And
>>how can one not assume that the appointment selection of Don Rumsfeld to be
>>his Defense Secretary was, in a way, one more jab by the son toward the
>>father?
>>
>>Goodman: I wanted to go back, before we go forward and talk, for example,
>>about Rumsfeld and the torture memo, to something that most people may not
>>be aware of and that's a very significant part of Rumsfeld's life, which is
>>being the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Searle and his links to as
>>aspartame. Tell that story, Andrew Cockburn.
>>
>>Cockburn: OK. Well, when Rumsfeld left office with the Ford administration
>>in January 1977, he signed on first as a consultant and then as CEO with
>>G.D. Searle, which was then -- it's since disappeared -- but it was then a
>>very major pharmaceutical company and was owned and run by people he had
>>been to school with, the Searle family. And the company, at that time, was
>>in desperate trouble. I mean, the belief on Wall Street was that it was
>>going under, because they had been rather badly managed and they were facing
>>a major grand jury investigation for what -- I mean, just to put it in kind
>>terms -- was misleadingly reported drug tests on new products. So the grand
>>jury was about to open fire on them.
>>
>>So they appointed Rumsfeld. And the only ray of light for the company was
>>this artificial sweetener called aspartame, which they discovered actually
>>by accident, but seemed to have great potential. But there was, again, a
>>problem, which was that the FDA was responding to the views of certain -- of
>>a lot of scientists who thought that it gave people brain cancer. So it was
>>not releasing it. So Rumsfeld's major mission while he was in that job was
>>to get this stuff released -- approved for release for sale to the public,
>>which he finally managed to do, but only after the Reagan administration
>>came in, whereupon the FDA commissioner was promptly fired, and someone more
>>obedient was put in, who, of course, approved release. So that's how
>>Rumsfeld made his money and earned his reputation, you know, as a capable
>>businessman, which a lot of people dispute.
>>
>>Goodman: Let's turn now to the key issue of torture. Talk about how Donald
>>Rumsfeld got involved with condoning, laying the groundwork for the memos
>>around torture, Andrew Cockburn.
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, I mean, if you really want to go back to the beginning, I
>>think it's that he's a rather harsh individual. But you have to remember, in
>>that job he was in alliance with the neoconservatives, who had been saying
>>for years that we must take the gloves off with terrorism, not let the rule
>>of law interfere -- I mean, Doug Feith had been saying that for years -- so
>>that right from the beginning, once -- you know, after the September 11th
>>attacks, there was a predisposition to go down this route.
>>
>>And we can see it very early on in Afghanistan, when, for example, when they
>>captured the unfortunate John Walker Lindh, the American youth who had
>>joined the Taliban. Instructions arrived from Washington immediately from
>>the Office of the General Counsel at the Pentagon, who was Rumsfeld's
>>lawyer, essentially, saying take the gloves off in interrogating this young
>>man, which they certainly did.
>>
>>Then on, you see there's a paper trail, most significantly or most vividly,
>>perhaps, a December 2, 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that approved a whole
>>bunch of -- well, I mean, torture techniques is exactly what they are. They
>>call them, you know, counter-resistance techniques, and there's all sorts of
>>euphemisms for them, which -- you know, stress positions, sleep depravation,
>>harsh noises, all the sort of dreary or the repellent sort of litany of
>>things they've used that have become famous since, particularly at Abu
>>Ghraib. He approved them.
>>
>>We know that, actually, this was specifically intended for the use against
>>one particular prisoner, Qahtani, who was in Guantanamo, who they thought
>>was the twentieth hijacker. And we know from, you know, an internal
>>investigation later that Rumsfeld was personally involved in monitoring the
>>torture -- I mean, the interrogation, which was a torture interrogation, of
>>this one particular prisoner.
>>
>>So then, of course, when Abu Ghraib -- when Iraq -- after the invasion and
>>occupation of Iraq, these same techniques were then transposed there on
>>Rumsfeld's direct order. Not only that, we know from court testimony -- or
>>as I describe, court testimony in the case of the lower-ranking people, who
>>are the only ones who have been tried on this matter, that Rumsfeld and Paul
>>Wolfowitz, who's done his best to tiptoe away from all this but was very
>>much involved, were actually in regular contact with Abu Ghraib, with the
>>prison, to see how the interrogations were coming on. So, you know, his
>>footprints -- and I chart this -- or fingerprints, I should say, are all
>>over this repellent practice.
>>
>>Goodman: I wanted to go back to an excerpt of an interview we did last
>>November. We talked to Mohammed al-Qahtani's lawyer Gita Gutierrez. She's
>>one of the attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights that filed a
>>war crimes lawsuit in Germany against Rumsfeld and other high-ranking US
>>officials for their role in the torture of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo.
>>She described what Mohammed al-Qahtani said happened to him at Guantanamo.
>>
>>Gita Gutierrez: Specifically, he was subjected to approximately 160 days of
>>isolation, forty-eight days of sleep depravation, which was accompanied by
>>twenty hour-long interrogations, consecutively. He would be permitted to
>>sleep for four hours, between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00, in order to disrupt his
>>sleep patterns and wear him down psychologically.
>>
>>During that period of time, he was also subjected to sexual humiliation,
>>euphemistically called "invasion of space by a female," at times when MPs
>>would hold him down on the floor and female interrogators would straddle him
>>and molest him.
>>
>>He was subjected to religious humiliation and was forcibly had his beard and
>>hair shaved, which, of course, is a violation of his faith.
>>
>>He was physically abused, had medical professionals in the room during his
>>interrogations monitoring him and at times doing medical procedures on him
>>in conjunction with the interrogation.
>>
>>So, he was put through quite a number of tactics, in and of themselves which
>>would constitute torture, but certainly in combination had a tremendous and
>>severe psychological and physical effect on him.
>>
>>Goodman: Gita Gutierrez, speaking to us from Germany, where the Center for
>>Constitutional Rights had gone to file suit against Donald Rumsfeld, other
>>high-ranking officials, including Alberto Gonzales, General Sanchez and
>>General Miller, as well, who headed Guantanamo, then went to Abu Ghraib to,
>>as they say, "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. The significance of this, how Rumsfeld
>>responded to this, how he dealt with questions from President Bush over
>>this?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, of course, he denied it. I mean, he's always tried to
>>deflect, you know, blame for any of this often on the ranks of subordinates,
>>which is what he tends to do. And when there was an investigation in
>>response to complaints from FBI men at Guantanamo at the treatment of many
>>including Qahtani, Air Force Lieutenant General Schmidt, who actually
>>interviewed Rumsfeld on this specific issue of Qahtani, Rumsfeld actually
>>sort of joked about it. I mean, it's absolutely disgusting. He said, "Oh,
>>did I really give orders to put a bra on this man's head and make him dance
>>with another man?" to which Schmidt replied, "Yes, you did, sir." You know,
>>it's Rumsfeld all over. He will, time and time again, I found that he will
>>order something, he will call something to happen, and then when he's
>>questioned on it, he will seek to blame others.
>>
>>Goodman: Can you talk about Rumsfeld after the attacks of September 11th?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, he sort of became famous. He was in decline at that point.
>>He was doing very badly at the Pentagon. Then, on September 11th, he was,
>>you know, famously advertised as having gone out, rushed out to help the
>>wounded. Well, what actually happened was that the plane hit the building --
>>the planes that hit in the -- you know, there had been the attacks in New
>>York, Rumsfeld actually had gone on, rather like Bush listening to My Pet
>>Goat, he had gone on with his normal day. His bodyguard had realized that
>>something actually was up and was waiting outside his door to take him
>>somewhere, to some bunker somewhere.
>>
>>When the plane hit the Pentagon, Rumsfeld emerges from his office and sets
>>off, without a word to anyone, without telling any of his command staff
>>where he was going, to have a look. They wander through the building, and
>>eventually they find the place, you know, the crash site. He does help push
>>one gurney, one stretcher, across the grass for a minute or so. And then it
>>dawns on him that, you know, maybe he's in the wrong place. Meanwhile, the
>>radio, the guard's radio, is erupting with messages saying, "Where's the
>>secretary? Where's Mr. Rumsfeld?" because, you know, he was the Secretary of
>>Defense. The country was under attack. He actually had a job to do. But, of
>>course, they couldn't go back, get back, because those frequencies were
>>jammed, to say, well, he's here. So during these -- for twenty minutes, he
>>was completely out of touch.
>>
>>Meanwhile, Cheney, in his bunker under the White House, was busily ordering
>>passenger planes to be shot down all over the place. So, I mean, he
>>contributed materially to the whole dysfunctional reaction to the attacks,
>>and then finally wandered back, got to his command post, actually only fifty
>>minutes after the plane had had hit the Pentagon, and finally began issuing
>>what turned out to be totally irrelevant orders. So really, I'd say, it was
>>rather a typical day for Rumsfeld. He was in the wrong place. You know, he
>>didn't do his duty and concerned himself with irrelevant matters.
>>
>>Goodman: Why did you choose to write this book? And, as you did it, what
>>surprised you most?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, I did it because, I mean, it was clear to me that this man,
>>even beyond what we generally thought, was -- you know, had this immense
>>power. I mean, for years, there he had been. He had been one of the most
>>powerful people in the world. And really, beyond a few sort of impressions
>>and some myths peddled by himself, like helping the wounded on 9/11, we
>>really didn't know that much about him. I mean, one senior White House
>>person I talked to about him, I said, "Well, is he really that powerful?" He
>>said, "Are you kidding? He gets to spend half the discretionary budget of
>>the United States government, and he has a total veto on foreign policy. How
>>powerful is that?"
>>
>>What surprised me most -- I really wasn't thinking -- was how incompetent he
>>was. I mean, what a poor manager. You know, among the myths peddled about
>>him was he was this, you know, no-nonsense efficient CEO, an American
>>business hero, basically on the basis of peddling this -- of, you know, his
>>time with the drug company, where he had functioned more as a lobbyist than
>>anything else. So what I found time and time again was how sort of useless
>>he was, that he couldn't -- you know, he sprayed memos everywhere -- he
>>called them snowflakes -- ordering people to do this, that and the other
>>thing. But, actually, after a while, the bureaucracy realized that if you
>>paid no attention, nothing much happened to you, because there was never any
>>follow-through. And he used to send out a hundred a day, so, of course, he
>>had no time to find out if anyone had paid attention.
>>
>>Goodman: In 2006, you write that George W. Bush said to his father, "What's
>>a neocon?"
>>
>>Cockburn: That's right. One of the rare moments of sort of communication
>>between the two. Bush said to -- they were out at Kennebunkport, and Bush
>>Jr. says, "Can I ask you a question? What's a neocon?" And the father says,
>>"Do you want names or a description?" The President says, "I'll take a
>>description." He says, "I'll give it to you in one word: Israel," which is
>>interesting on all sorts of levels, including the confirmation that our
>>president doesn't really read the newspapers.
>>
>>Goodman: Explain what you mean when you say that. And how do you know that
>>this conversation took place at their vacation home?
>>
>>Cockburn: Well, I can't really say who told me, but it's someone who was --
>>I have absolute confidence in both in their -- that they're telling the
>>truth and also in their position to be aware of this conversation.
>>
>>Goodman: You had Rumsfeld playing a war game after George H.W. Bush became
>>president, playing the President. End there.
>>
>>Cockburn: He played numerous war games. When he couldn't become president
>>himself, he decided to act the part, so he took part in secret high-level
>>Pentagon war games, where they rehearsed what happens when there's a nuclear
>>attack. And other parties, other players noticed that Rumsfeld, instead of
>>getting on with what he was meant to be doing in this game, which was
>>reconstructing the country, reconstituting the government, he was all for
>>blowing up the world. I mean, he was all for instant massive retaliation to
>>incinerate the eastern hemisphere, is what he really liked doing.
>>
>>Goodman: I want to thank you very much for being with us. His book is
>>Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. 
>>
>>Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program,
>>Democracy Now! <http://democracynow.org>  
>>
>>C 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
>>View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/49109/
>>


Warmly, Jeanne