Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down George W. Bush, the president of

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by Electrophil

Oh Yeah, there was a time when the Sudan government offered him up to the Saudi Government, but they couldn't touch him due to the political climate in their country at the time.

The Sudan's then offered him to the U.S., who couldn't touch him, cause at the time, they had no case against him. This was way before the African Embassy bombings, much less the Cole incident. We didn't have anything on the guy.

here, you lefty liberals like to copy-n-paste, so knock yourself out:

Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001

Bill Clinton ignored repeated opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies and is responsible for the spread of terrorism, one of the ex-president’s own top aides charges.

Mansoor Ijaz, who negotiated with Sudan on behalf of Clinton from 1996 to 1998, paints a portrait of a White House plagued by incompetence, focused on appearances rather than action, and heedless of profound threats to national security.

Ijaz also claims Clinton passed on an opportunity to have Osama bin Laden arrested.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, hoping to have terrorism sanctions lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and "detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas,” Ijaz writes in today’s edition of the liberal Los Angeles Times.

These networks included the two hijackers who piloted jetliners into the World Trade Center.

But Clinton and National Security Adviser Samuel "Sandy” Berger failed to act.

”I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities,” Ijaz writes.

”The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening."

Thank Clinton for 'Hydra-like Monster'

”As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster,” says Ijaz, chairman of a New York investment company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ijaz’s revelations are but the latest to implicate the Clinton administration in the spread of terrorism. Former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson today also noted the failure of Clinton to do more than talk.

Among the many others who have pointed out Clinton’s negligence: former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, the late author Barbara Olson, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iraqi expert Laurie Mylroie, the CIA and some of the victims of Sept. 11.

And the list grows: members of Congress, pundit Charles R. Smith, former Department of Energy official Notra Trulock, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, government counterterrorism experts, the law firm Judicial Watch, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, the liberal Boston Globe – and even Clinton himself.

The Buck Stops Nowhere

Ijaz's account in the Times reads like a spy novel. Sudan’s Bashir, fearing the rise of bin Laden, sent intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996. They offered to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or to keep close watch over him. The Saudis "didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.”

”In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.”

That’s when bin Laden went to Afghanistan, along with "Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for al-Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.”

If these names sound familiar, just check the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists.

The Clinton administration repeatedly rejected crucial information that Sudan had gathered on these terrorists, Ijaz says.

In July 2000, just three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, Ijaz "brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies - an ally whose name I am not free to divulge - approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.”

This offer would have brought bin Laden to that Arab country and eventually to the U.S. All the proposal required of Clinton was that he make a state visit to request extradition.

"But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family - Clintonian diplomacy at its best.”

'Purposeful Obfuscation'

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s "The O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday night, Ijaz said, "Everything we needed to know about the terrorist networks” was in Sudan.

Newsman Bill O’Reilly asked how Clinton and Berger reacted to the deals Ijaz brokered to bring bin Laden and company to justice. "Zero. They didn’t respond at all.”

The Clintonoids won’t get away with denials, he said. "I’ve got the documentation,” including a memorandum to Berger.

"This was purposeful obfuscation,” he asserted.

O’Reilly wondered why the White House didn’t want information about the terrorists. Ijaz said that was for the American people to judge, but when pressed he suggested that Clinton might intentionally have allowed the apparently weak bin Laden to rise so he could later make a show of crushing him.

Concludes Ijaz in the Times: "Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.”

[WGJ]

you're starting to get the idea, some documentation to support your position. See it's not that hard to do some research and share it with us. And, suprise, suprise, your frontal lobe didn't explode!
WGJ

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by WGJ

Congratualations Landshark...
you're starting to get the idea, some documentation to support your position. See it's not that hard to do some research and share it with us. And, suprise, suprise, your frontal lobe didn't explode!
WGJ

thanks for the encouragement. its just that i have better things to do than search around the internet to find stuff to copy 'n paste for you weirdos.

and now i'll return the favor: you did spell documentation right, and that's a long word.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by Landshark

thanks for the encouragement. its just that i have better things to do than search around the internet to find stuff to copy 'n paste for you weirdos.

and now i'll return the favor: you did spell documentation right, and that's a long word.

If you gave us Newsmax.com as a legitimate source, then it's obvious you have better things to do and you obviously do those things better.

Newsmax.com has 5 Ann Coulter articles on their homepage alone, with a Ann Coulter banner across the top. It doesn't lean to the right, it's already fell over.

[Landshark]

damn double post!

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by Electrophil

If you gave us Newsmax.com as a legitimate source, then it's obvious you have better things to do and you obviously do those things better.

it's not important where the article was posted. its important what Mansoor Ijaz, who worked as a Clinton administration advisor, said: that Clinton screwed up big time. repeatedly.

this sounds like a real Neocon, right?

Ijaz has been a major donor to Democratic Party campaigns and candidates. This includes:
* $20,000 in the 1994 election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign;
* $30,500 in the 1996 election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee;
* $15,000 in the 1998 election cycle to the Democratiuc Senatorial Campaign;
* $8,000 in the 2000 election cycle to the Democratic Committee of New York, Tom Carper, Tim Johnson, Mel Carnahan, Charles S. Robb and Hilliary Rodham Clinton.

The Washington Post noted that Ijaz raised a total of $525,000 for the Democratic Party. This included "$250,000 from his personal funds and $200,000 donated by guests at a fund-raising reception for Vice President [Al] Gore at Ijaz's New York penthouse in September, according to Federal Election Commission records, White House documents and Ijaz," the Washington Post reported.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by Landshark

it's not important where the article was posted. its important what Mansoor Ijaz, who worked as a Clinton administration advisor, said: that Clinton screwed up big time. repeatedly.

this sounds like a real Neocon, right?

Ijaz has been a major donor to Democratic Party campaigns and candidates. This includes:
* $20,000 in the 1994 election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign;
* $30,500 in the 1996 election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee;
* $15,000 in the 1998 election cycle to the Democratiuc Senatorial Campaign;
* $8,000 in the 2000 election cycle to the Democratic Committee of New York, Tom Carper, Tim Johnson, Mel Carnahan, Charles S. Robb and Hilliary Rodham Clinton.

The Washington Post noted that Ijaz raised a total of $525,000 for the Democratic Party. This included "$250,000 from his personal funds and $200,000 donated by guests at a fund-raising reception for Vice President [Al] Gore at Ijaz's New York penthouse in September, according to Federal Election Commission records, White House documents and Ijaz," the Washington Post reported.

I just looked this guy up. He did his "negotiations" as a private citizen, and offered it to the Clinton Administration, which was turned down. I doubt if Billy boy ever even met him. They may have thought he was another whack job.

He's disgruntled, and became fodder for places like Newsmax.com. Kind of exactly what some said about Clark. Difference being, Clark was Anti-terrorism IN the Bush administration.

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by Electrophil

I just looked this guy up. He did his "negotiations" as a private citizen, and offered it to the Clinton Administration, which was turned down. I doubt if Billy boy ever even met him. They may have thought he was another whack job.

He's disgruntled, and became fodder for places like Newsmax.com. Kind of exactly what some said about Clark. Difference being, Clark was Anti-terrorism IN the Bush administration.

Best to just keep quiet and let it pass. The post is valid and true. As to Clark being anti terrrorism under BUSH--why don't you tell that right too????
Clark was appointed to his position by Clinton and Bush kept him on for a while. He later replaced him because he was inept and it is Clark who was mad for being replaced and spreading sour grapes info.

Lee

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by lhopp77

Best to just keep quiet and let it pass. The post is valid and true. As to Clark being anti terrrorism under BUSH--why don't you tell that right too????
Clark was appointed to his position by Clinton and Bush kept him on for a while. He later replaced him because he was inept and it is Clark who was mad for being replaced and spreading sour grapes info.

Lee

Never said where Clark came from. We could back where he came from all the way to his mama if we wanted.

He was the Anti-Terrorism Czar under Bush, and Bush wouldn't listen to him.

He was screaming at the top of his lungs that Al-Qaeda was an immediate threat, and Bush couldn't hear him over his chainsaw on the ranch.

This Ijaz guy was even less. He had no association or job with the Clinton administration, or any administration.

How is telling your buddy Bush that Al-Qaeda is an immediate threat inept?
The ones that wasn't telling him got medals.

But.... I'm sure that makes perfect sense to you.

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by Electrophil

He was the Anti-Terrorism Czar under Bush, and Bush wouldn't listen to him.
He was screaming at the top of his lungs that Al-Qaeda was an immediate threat, and Bush couldn't hear him over his chainsaw on the ranch.
This Ijaz guy was even less. He had no association or job with the Clinton administration, or any administration.
How is telling your buddy Bush that Al-Qaeda is an immediate threat inept?
The ones that wasn't telling him got medals.

Obviously Clinton did not listen to Clark and he was the one that appointed him and that is why Clinton took the opportunity to take Osama captive---right???????

Ijaz had an association with the Clinton administration because it was during their watch that the golden opportunity arose to have Osama handed on a platter.

You tend to forget things. Must be old age--you reckon??

Lee

[WGJ]

next thing you know it adds up to real money. While we're hunting down Bush let's not forget the Puppet Master, Rummy:

Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld's Attention Was Elsewhere

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A15


The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

Rumsfeld agreed but complained. "I find it strange," he said to the investigators, on the grounds that as a government official "the laws apply to me" anyway.

It was a bumpy start to an odd interview, as Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with "the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed.

Then-Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz, who resigned last year to take a job with a defense contractor, told senators at a June 2005 hearing that the transcript of Rumsfeld's interview was deleted from his 256-page report on the tanker lease scandal because Rumsfeld had not said anything relevant.

But a copy of the transcript, obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The issue is relevant because a series of reports, including others by the inspector general and by the Government Accountability Office, indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department's system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional.

"DOD is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective fashion," the comptroller general of the United States, David M. Walker, said in a little-noticed April 5 critique. The Pentagon, he said, has "a long-standing track record of over-promising and un-delivering with virtual impunity."

Walker based his blistering assessment on a detailed study of 52 different weapons costing a total of $850 billion, including five new multibillion-dollar weapons systems with cost overruns amounting to nearly 30 percent. "The all too-frequent result is that large and expensive programs are continually rebaselined, cut back or even scrapped after years of failing to achieve promised capability," he said. "A lot of it is because in the past, where there have been unacceptable outcomes, there hasn't been any accountability."

Some of the blame, Walker suggested, should be laid at Rumsfeld's office, which "does not seem to be pushing" for the dramatic overhaul of the Pentagon's system needs.

The tanker procurement scandal is the poster child for these problems. The Air Force in 2004 canceled its plan to lease the tankers from the Boeing Co., amid allegations of improper collusion with the company. Former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun and one of the interlocutors at Boeing were sent to prison; subsequent investigations showed that Druyun manipulated other large Air Force contracts to benefit military contractors.

After a Senate investigation unearthed evidence that the tanker purchase was viewed inside the Pentagon as a politically tinged bailout for Boeing, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and his top acquisitions deputy resigned from government. Boeing's chief executive was replaced, and last month the firm agreed to pay $615 million to settle all liability for the tanker scandal and an unrelated impropriety. It was the largest penalty paid by a defense contractor.

But the scandal never tarnished Rumsfeld, and in the previously undisclosed interview, conducted with principal Deputy General Counsel Daniel J. Dell'Orto at his side, the defense secretary makes clear that he does wars, not defense procurement. As a result, he could not recollect details of what subordinates told him about the tanker lease or what he said to them.

Rumsfeld is a former business executive and White House official who published a set of "Rumsfeld's Rules" that include the injunction: "Be precise -- a lack of precision is dangerous." But when investigators asked him whether he had approved the Boeing tanker lease in May 2003 -- despite widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules along the way -- Rumsfeld said: "I don't remember approving it. But I certainly don't remember not approving it, if you will."

Asked whether his subordinates, including former undersecretary of defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, had accurately invoked Rumsfeld's approval when they signed documents authorizing the Boeing tanker lease to go forward, Rumsfeld said, "I may very well have said yes. I just don't remember. . . . I am not going to sit here and quibble over it." He did say he remembered approving a gun for a tank in 1976, during his first time as defense secretary.

When pressed about the tanker lease -- the largest such lease in U.S. history -- Rumsfeld offered two explanations for his distance from it. The first was related to his focus on what he called "the global war on terror," including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what he termed the "continuing difficulties" with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"My time basically in the department was focused on those things and certainly not on acquisitions or -- or what have you," Rumsfeld said. "Basically I spend an overwhelming portion of my time with the combatant commanders and functioning as the link between the president . . . and the combatant commanders conducting the wars."

Asked if he was aware of concerns about the proposed Air Force lease from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon's own analysts, Rumsfeld responded, "I don't know what I knew then, compared to what I know now. . . . I am not able to go back and say . . . what did I know at a certain moment back in that period."

He also indicated that his office procedures are loose. "I work in here, I am going to guess, 12 hours a day. . . . I also know that people come in and out of this office all the time. Send me memos, half of which I -- are appropriate for me to have, some of which aren't, which I don't read. And call or come in and say I am going to do this or what do you think about that."

Rumsfeld said that given "all of those hours and hours in meetings and questions," he couldn't "say of certain knowledge" whether he provided any guidance about the lease to subordinates. He assumed, he said, that they were following "the normal rules that would apply to what it is they do."

This perplexed one of the investigators, who asked how Rumsfeld knew the information he got about the tankers was reliable if established procurement procedures were not followed. "In terms of knowledge that -- that -- from that period, I am without it," Rumsfeld replied.

The investigators tried a different tack. Tell us, one said, about the extent and nature of conversations with the White House about the tanker lease. The question related to the fact that in 2002 President Bush asked then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to help reach a deal between the Pentagon and Boeing, which had substantial clout on Capitol Hill and was a major contributor to Bush's inaugural celebration.

"I have been told," Rumsfeld said, "that discussions with the president are privileged, and with his immediate staff." Large portions of text on the next five pages of the 38-page interview transcript were blacked out in the copy provided to The Post.

Part of the controversy over the tanker deal involved the department's failure to conduct an "Analysis of Alternatives" -- a routine comparison of options mandated by Pentagon rules before any large-scale weapons acquisition. When one investigator started asking about this, Rumsfeld demurred. "You are way out of my league on all of this," he said.

Rumsfeld went on to express frustration that some lawmakers responded to the scandal by blocking the promotions or new appointments of those involved. "We have practically no one left on the civilian side of the Air Force. . . . And the . . . damage that was done by the way this was handled has been terrible." Fortunately, he added, the lease "did not go through" because of "people in the Senate and others, whistleblowers, or whoever did what they did."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman responded about two weeks ago that Rumsfeld views his role as setting top-level policy and keeping abreast of acquisition issues, not becoming involved in "day-to-day programmatic decisions." He created a video message stressing the importance of ethics in weapons-buying, Whitman said.

But in the past six years, while Rumsfeld occasionally mentioned procurement problems in his public appearances, he delivered only one major speech about the need for reform in how the Pentagon buys weapons. He complained in the speech that "our financial systems are decades old" and noted estimates that "we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." He also said that the acquisition process was being improved and that "we now budget based on realistic estimates."

Rumsfeld's speech was delivered on Sept. 10, 2001.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by lhopp77

Obviously Clinton did not listen to Clark and he was the one that appointed him and that is why Clinton took the opportunity to take Osama captive---right???????

Ijaz had an association with the Clinton administration because it was during their watch that the golden opportunity arose to have Osama handed on a platter.

You tend to forget things. Must be old age--you reckon??

Lee

I reckon you are a screamin' Right winger, ya no good right winger.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by WGJ

next thing you know it adds up to real money. While we're hunting down Bush let's not forget the Puppet Master, Rummy:

Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld's Attention Was Elsewhere

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A15


The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

Rumsfeld agreed but complained. "I find it strange," he said to the investigators, on the grounds that as a government official "the laws apply to me" anyway.

It was a bumpy start to an odd interview, as Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with "the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed.

Then-Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz, who resigned last year to take a job with a defense contractor, told senators at a June 2005 hearing that the transcript of Rumsfeld's interview was deleted from his 256-page report on the tanker lease scandal because Rumsfeld had not said anything relevant.

But a copy of the transcript, obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The issue is relevant because a series of reports, including others by the inspector general and by the Government Accountability Office, indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department's system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional.

"DOD is simply not positioned to deliver high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective fashion," the comptroller general of the United States, David M. Walker, said in a little-noticed April 5 critique. The Pentagon, he said, has "a long-standing track record of over-promising and un-delivering with virtual impunity."

Walker based his blistering assessment on a detailed study of 52 different weapons costing a total of $850 billion, including five new multibillion-dollar weapons systems with cost overruns amounting to nearly 30 percent. "The all too-frequent result is that large and expensive programs are continually rebaselined, cut back or even scrapped after years of failing to achieve promised capability," he said. "A lot of it is because in the past, where there have been unacceptable outcomes, there hasn't been any accountability."

Some of the blame, Walker suggested, should be laid at Rumsfeld's office, which "does not seem to be pushing" for the dramatic overhaul of the Pentagon's system needs.

The tanker procurement scandal is the poster child for these problems. The Air Force in 2004 canceled its plan to lease the tankers from the Boeing Co., amid allegations of improper collusion with the company. Former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun and one of the interlocutors at Boeing were sent to prison; subsequent investigations showed that Druyun manipulated other large Air Force contracts to benefit military contractors.

After a Senate investigation unearthed evidence that the tanker purchase was viewed inside the Pentagon as a politically tinged bailout for Boeing, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and his top acquisitions deputy resigned from government. Boeing's chief executive was replaced, and last month the firm agreed to pay $615 million to settle all liability for the tanker scandal and an unrelated impropriety. It was the largest penalty paid by a defense contractor.

But the scandal never tarnished Rumsfeld, and in the previously undisclosed interview, conducted with principal Deputy General Counsel Daniel J. Dell'Orto at his side, the defense secretary makes clear that he does wars, not defense procurement. As a result, he could not recollect details of what subordinates told him about the tanker lease or what he said to them.

Rumsfeld is a former business executive and White House official who published a set of "Rumsfeld's Rules" that include the injunction: "Be precise -- a lack of precision is dangerous." But when investigators asked him whether he had approved the Boeing tanker lease in May 2003 -- despite widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules along the way -- Rumsfeld said: "I don't remember approving it. But I certainly don't remember not approving it, if you will."

Asked whether his subordinates, including former undersecretary of defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, had accurately invoked Rumsfeld's approval when they signed documents authorizing the Boeing tanker lease to go forward, Rumsfeld said, "I may very well have said yes. I just don't remember. . . . I am not going to sit here and quibble over it." He did say he remembered approving a gun for a tank in 1976, during his first time as defense secretary.

When pressed about the tanker lease -- the largest such lease in U.S. history -- Rumsfeld offered two explanations for his distance from it. The first was related to his focus on what he called "the global war on terror," including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what he termed the "continuing difficulties" with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

"My time basically in the department was focused on those things and certainly not on acquisitions or -- or what have you," Rumsfeld said. "Basically I spend an overwhelming portion of my time with the combatant commanders and functioning as the link between the president . . . and the combatant commanders conducting the wars."

Asked if he was aware of concerns about the proposed Air Force lease from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon's own analysts, Rumsfeld responded, "I don't know what I knew then, compared to what I know now. . . . I am not able to go back and say . . . what did I know at a certain moment back in that period."

He also indicated that his office procedures are loose. "I work in here, I am going to guess, 12 hours a day. . . . I also know that people come in and out of this office all the time. Send me memos, half of which I -- are appropriate for me to have, some of which aren't, which I don't read. And call or come in and say I am going to do this or what do you think about that."

Rumsfeld said that given "all of those hours and hours in meetings and questions," he couldn't "say of certain knowledge" whether he provided any guidance about the lease to subordinates. He assumed, he said, that they were following "the normal rules that would apply to what it is they do."

This perplexed one of the investigators, who asked how Rumsfeld knew the information he got about the tankers was reliable if established procurement procedures were not followed. "In terms of knowledge that -- that -- from that period, I am without it," Rumsfeld replied.

The investigators tried a different tack. Tell us, one said, about the extent and nature of conversations with the White House about the tanker lease. The question related to the fact that in 2002 President Bush asked then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to help reach a deal between the Pentagon and Boeing, which had substantial clout on Capitol Hill and was a major contributor to Bush's inaugural celebration.

"I have been told," Rumsfeld said, "that discussions with the president are privileged, and with his immediate staff." Large portions of text on the next five pages of the 38-page interview transcript were blacked out in the copy provided to The Post.

Part of the controversy over the tanker deal involved the department's failure to conduct an "Analysis of Alternatives" -- a routine comparison of options mandated by Pentagon rules before any large-scale weapons acquisition. When one investigator started asking about this, Rumsfeld demurred. "You are way out of my league on all of this," he said.

Rumsfeld went on to express frustration that some lawmakers responded to the scandal by blocking the promotions or new appointments of those involved. "We have practically no one left on the civilian side of the Air Force. . . . And the . . . damage that was done by the way this was handled has been terrible." Fortunately, he added, the lease "did not go through" because of "people in the Senate and others, whistleblowers, or whoever did what they did."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman responded about two weeks ago that Rumsfeld views his role as setting top-level policy and keeping abreast of acquisition issues, not becoming involved in "day-to-day programmatic decisions." He created a video message stressing the importance of ethics in weapons-buying, Whitman said.

But in the past six years, while Rumsfeld occasionally mentioned procurement problems in his public appearances, he delivered only one major speech about the need for reform in how the Pentagon buys weapons. He complained in the speech that "our financial systems are decades old" and noted estimates that "we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." He also said that the acquisition process was being improved and that "we now budget based on realistic estimates."

Rumsfeld's speech was delivered on Sept. 10, 2001.

Anybody got this in paperback?

It's going to take me 30 minutes to read this. Oh well,, may as well get started.

[Electrophil]

That was a lot of reading. But an excellent article!!

[Royal Tiger]

Post ho'in again Robert? Kerry was an idiot, so I wonder where we would be today if McCain had gotten the Republican ballot over Bush. He's definatly smarter.