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17 Victims Sue Pentagon Over 'Plague' of Sexual Violence
By Andrea Stone - AOL NewsWASHINGTON -- It may become a landmark case to force the military to take rape and sexual assault seriously. Or it could be yet another failed attempt in a decades-long battle by women to be accepted in the armed forces. Seventeen veterans and active-duty service members today took the first step to determining that, suing the Pentagon on charges of violating their constitutional rights to serve their country. They accused two secretaries of defense of condoning, ignoring and implicitly encouraging sexual abuse in the ranks in a 42-page complaint filed in federal district court in ...
Big Defense Budget Request Actually Down in Total Dollars
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL NewsDefense Secretary Robert Gates today unveiled the Pentagon's proposed 2012 budget, the department's largest-ever spending request, calling it "a reasonable, responsible and sustainable level of funding" given the national security threats facing the United States. The request included $553 billion for the base budget of the Defense Department and an additional $118 billion to support ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter number represents a decline from the Pentagon's 2011 spending, primarily because of the expected troop withdrawal from Iraq, but the base budget ...
Rumsfeld: MIA on the True Costs of the Iraq War
By David Corn - Politics DailyI was reading Donald Rumsfeld's just-released memoir, "Known and Unknown," when I came across a passage that brought me to a dead stop: "The U.S. military involvement in Iraq has come at a high price. Combat took the lives of thousands of American servicemen and -women and left many more wounded. The U.S. Treasury spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The prolong war also poisoned our politics at home." What's missing from this picture? A hundred thousand or so dead Iraqi civilians. Iraq Body Count website, which keeps track of reported civilian casualties, reports that since the U.S. ...
Rumsfeld Files Reveal Pre-9/11 Focus on Iraq
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL NewsThousands of documents made available by Donald Rumsfeld to coincide with the publication of his memoir today reveal an early focus on Iraq, even before 9/11, and his willingness to consider a variety of options that critics might consider hypocritical but that the former defense secretary regarded as thoroughly rational. "At the right moment, we may want to give Saddam Hussein a way out for his family to live in comfort," Rumsfeld wrote on Sept. 21, 2001, in a one-sentence memo. Rumsfeld's so-called "snowflake" memos -- he issued hundreds of them from 2001 to 2006 -- are now available as ...
Donald Rumsfeld's New Memoir Trashed by Critics, John McCain and the ACLU
By David Knowles - AOL NewsYou go to press with the book you have. Coming in at just over 800 pages, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's new book, "Known and Unknown," was an ambitious undertaking. Given the harsh early reviews that have come in so far, however, one wonders if all that effort might have been better spent on a golf course. Surge Desk surveys the critical response to the book so far. Writing at The New York Times, veteran reviewer Michiko Kakutani lays into Rumsfeld's tome with marked vigor: The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others -- most notably the C.I.A., ...
Rumsfeld Says He Should Have Quit Defense Post After Abu Ghraib Scandal
By Politics Daily Staff - Politics DailyDonald Rumsfeld, known for his tart one-liners as well as his hawkish foreign policy stands, says in a new memoir that he regrets that he did not step down as defense secretary after reports of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In "Known and Unknown," Rumsfeld says he wishes he had insisted that President George W. Bush accept his offer to resign after news broke in 2004 of the rough and humiliating treatment of detainees by American jailers. In an account of the book by the New York Times, Rumsfeld blamed the abuses on rogue soldiers -- not any approved policies. But he says that "more ...
Rumsfeld Memoir Highlights VIP Access to Government Files
By Sharon Weinberger - AOL NewsTwo days after WikiLeaks began publishing classified diplomatic cables, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped forward to condemn the massive leak, declaring on his Twitter feed, "I was a co-sponsor of [the Freedom of Information Act] in 1966. There is an appropriate, lawful process for declassifying material. It's not #Wikileaks." To emphasize that "lawful process," Rumsfeld then added that his soon-to-be released book, "Known and Unknown," would be accompanied by hundreds of supporting documents -- some once secret -- and that all of them would be cleared by the U.S. ...
US Unable to Document Payments to Abu Ghraib Victims
By not in system - AOL News
WASHINGTON (Sept. 26) -- Fending off demands that he resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces." "It's the right thing to do," Rumsfeld said. "And it is my intention to see that we do." Six years later, the U.S. Army is unable to document a single payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. AP A detainee stands on a box with a bag on his head and wires ...
Donald Rumsfeld's Memoir, 'Known and Unknown,' Due Out in January
By Tom Kavanagh - Politics DailyFormer Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs will be published in January, AP reports, and the newly announced title carries the echo of his controversial six years under George W. Bush. "Known and Unknown," being published by Sentinel (an imprint of Penguin), refers to Rumsfeld's explanation in 2002 for the lack of evidence that Iraq was supplying terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know," he said. "There are known ...
Robert Gates Expects to Step Down as Defense Secretary in 2011
By Politics Daily Staff - Politics DailyRobert Gates, who defied expectations – and even surprised himself -- by staying on as secretary of defense once George W. Bush left office, now says he expects to retire in 2011. Gates, who turns 67 next month, tells Foreign Policy magazine that "it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012" to step down, with just one year to go in the president's current term. "This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year," he said. Gates took over for the embattled Donald Rumsfeld following the 2006 midterm elections. He did not foresee himself in the role once ...
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