Iraq's Next Dictator - Donald Henry Rumsfeld
The United States is contemplating a two year military occupation of Iraq following a war to depose Saddam Hussein. That will make the United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Henry Rumsfeld, the new dictator of Iraq. What are his qualifications for the job?
Childhood
Donald Rumsfeld was born July 9, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, residing at 982 Pine Street. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka. Winnetka is one of the wealthier North Shore Chicago suburbs. In high school, Rumsfeld was active in football, wrestling and student government.
Princeton
After high school Rumsfeld attended Princeton University on a Navy Reserve Officer Training Program scholarship. At Princeton, Rumsfeld majored in Politics. His thesis topic was "Reform in the Department of Justice by Attorney General Brownell".
Rumsfeld was a member of Cap and Gown Club. In his senior year, Rumsfeld was captain of 150 lb. football and captain of the varsity wrestling team.
After graduating from Princeton in 1954, Rumsfeld served his three year stint in the Navy as a flyer. In the Princeton yearbook, Rumsfeld indicated that he intended to attend law school.
Congress
Once Rumsfeld's Navy tour was completed, he headed straight for Washington, D.C. where he became administrative assistant to Republican Representative David S. Dennison, Jr. representing the 11th district of Ohio. Dennison served one term, losing the the Democratic landslide of 1958. Rumsfeld was Dennison's campaign manager. Rumsfeld then moved on to become a staff assistant to Representative Robert P. Griffin of Michigan.
Returning to Illinois, Rumsfeld spent two years in the investment banking business until deciding to run for Congress in 1962. The reapportionment following the 1960 census and the retirement of Marguerite Stitt Church, left a safe Republican seat on Chicago's north shore, which included Winnetka, up for grabs.
Rumsfeld, who listed himself as an independent in The Nassau Herald, Princeton's yearbook, entered the eight person race for the Republican nomination for the 13th Congressional District.
Rumsfeld's major opponent was a three term State Legislator, Marion E. Burks. The only issue in the race was a state insurance investigation of some allegedly unauthorized shares of company stock used as collateral for a loan to the Central Casualty company. Marion E. Burks had been the $15,000 a year chairman and secretary of the company, which went into bankruptcy because of a $1.5 million shortage. Burks, in his role as secretary of the company, was supposed to sign all stock certificates.
The investigation by Joseph S. Gerber, the state insurance commissioner (under the Democratic Governor Otto Kerner) was launched in January, when the primary was on April 10th. The spokesman for Central Casualty's president, Charles W. Bray, is quoted in Saturday, April 7th's Chicago Tribune (3 days before the primary) as saying, "The coming election has prompted Gerber's unusual interest in Central Casualty."
The headline on the Wednesday, April 11th, 1962 Chicago Tribune trumpeted, "Rumsfeld Beats Burks!". The final results were: Rumsfeld 47,037; Burks 19,037; Raymond Albert Mosley 2,187; and Edward L. Gordy 1,211. Rumsfeld, 29 years old, ran a campaign heavy on contributions of time and money from his high school and college acquaintances.
Rumsfeld's victory statement expressed his gratitude to the Republican voters for his "wonderful victory" and added that the 13th district citizens "have set an example to all of Cook county by the great turnout in this primary."
The article continues, "Rumsfeld thanked the committeemen and precinct captains who had supported him and said that in the coming months he intended to ask the advice of Rep. Marguerite Stitt Church."
"Burks statement made no mention of what was regarded as a principal, if not the principal cause of his defeat-his connection as board chairman with an insurance company being liquidated by the state. This involvement with what Burks insisted was only a "business failure" for which he was not responsible plagued the legislator's campaign for the day it became public knowledge."
Rumsfeld's campaign was helped by Jeb Magruder, who would go to jail in the wake of the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon, who went to Burks rallies and made sure that the insurance question was raised by voters in the audience.
Burks, who had been Assistant Director of the Illinois Department of Insurance from 1941-1946, went on to be appointed Judge of the Illinois Court of Claims and, in 1976, was elected Judge of the Circuit Court outside the City of Chicago. Burks received 535,980 votes to his opponent, Thomas A. Hett's 303,777.
The White House
After coasting to four easy general election victories, including the 1964 Goldwater debacle, Rumsfeld was persuaded by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to give up his seat and become Assistant Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the creation of which he had opposed as a Congressman.
Rumsfeld then went on to be Counsellor to President Richard Nixon from 1970- 1973; the Director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971-1973; and Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Rumsfeld must have been part of the cabal that forced the elected president Richard Nixon from office and installed the first congressionally appointed president, Gerald R. Ford, since the Rutherford B. Hayes - Samuel J. Tilden election almost a century before, because Rumsfeld was even more powerful as White House Chief of Staff under Ford from 1974-1975 than he had been under Nixon. And it was this appointed president, Gerald Ford, who promoted the career of George H.W. Bush and the people who stole the 2000 presidential election for his son. Rumsfeld then was made the youngest Secretary of Defense in the country's history and served from 1975-1977.
Rumsfeld was a member of President Ronald W. Reagan's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and advisor to the government on national security affairs from 1983-1984; special Presidential Ambassador to the Middle East from 1983-1984. For an even more complete biography of Donald Rumsfeld check out http://www.geocities.com/rummyfan/chicagomag.html
The Axis of Ivy
Now, along with George W. Bush, who stole the presidency, a graduate of Andover prep school, Yale University and Harvard Business School and Republican Senate Majority Leader William Frist, who gained his office by forcing out Trent Lott, who attended the prestigious Montgomery-Bell all boys preparatory school in Nashville, Tennessee, Princeton University, and Harvard Medical School, these men are going to wage a war for democratic regime change in Iraq? Bush and Rumsfeld do not even support democracy in the United States.
These are all pampered rich kids, children of privilege who, in addition to having almost everything given to them, have felt no compunction about taking even more. The war against Iraq is a personal vendetta, a return to the territorial warfare of the early nineteenth century under hereditary rulers. It is a colonial war that will result in a long term occupation of Iraq and, like Vietnam, a war of attrition that the distant, foreign, alien power will ultimately lose.
Political Warfare
Oh, and of course Bush, Rumsfeld and Frist have never served in the military during warfare. The only high ranking administration member who has, Colin Powell, is the least anxious to go to war and rule Iraq. The problem is that the war proponents do not understand the nature of the political war that Al-Queda is fighting.
Actually, Osama Bin Laden is winning the war. The purpose of attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon was to provoke a disproportionate military response against the Arabs from the United States. This was the successful strategy employed by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in Vietnam to turn the population against the United States and its South Vietnamese supporters.
The United States will win the military war in Iraq, but in the process, it will earn the undying enmity and revulsion of the entire Arab world, if not the entire world, depending on how many cluster bombs and atomic bombs it decides to use. Then, with troops on the ground in Iraq, there will be a long term guerilla war.
The Bush administration is about the accomplish the impossible, an alliance between the Iraqis and the Iranians. The British imposed a Saudi monarch on Iraq in 1921. The United States overthrew the Iranian Republic in 1953 and re-imposed the hereditary Shah.
And now, in 2003, the United States and Britain are going to impose another foreign despot, Donald Henry Rumsfeld, Princeton '54, on the Iraqi people. Rumsfeld has always wanted to be president, now he can be president of Iraq. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to illegally occupy Palestinian lands and slaughter civilians and children. This does not sound like a scenario for the future peace and prosperity of the world or the region.
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