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| Character on Parade: Rummy declined honor as âPerson of the Yearâ |
| 2004-01-07 |
| This was mentioned on WBAL (Baltimore talk radio) today. It isnât often that someone turns down an offer to be Time magazineâs âPerson of the Year,â especially when that someone is as important as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But thatâs what Rumsfeld did when he learned that Time was planning to honor him in its year-end issue last month. Rumsfeld told guests at a holiday party that in this year of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military deserved the honor more than he did, which is why Army Sgts. Marquette Whiteside and Ronald Buxton and Spc. Billie Grimes turned up on Timeâs Dec. 29 cover. Time Managing Editor James Kelly appears to confirm Rumseldâs self-effacing act, if only obliquely, in an editorâs note recounting that when he and several other editors âmet with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon in November to talk about the war, [the Defense Secretary] made the pitch, unsolicited by us, that the Person of the Year should be the American soldier. (Or as he put it, the American volunteer.)â Kelly also noted that Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy and senior correspondent Mark Thompson were working on a profile of Rumsfeld in preparation for the issue, but set it aside to help two fellow Time journalists who were injured in Iraq. (The profile appeared in the Person of the Year issue.) The lasting image I will always have of this man is when I saw the news clip of him carrying the wounded on a gurney after the attack on the Pentagon. |
| Posted by:Dragon Fly |
| #9 Zheng Fei, We don't need another half-million active troops, but another two divisions (~30,000 warriors, 10,000 support & garrison troops) would make life a lot easier for everyone, and allow better troop rotations in and out of such places as Iraq, Bosnia, Korea, and wherever else US troops are deployed. It would also give us a "cushion" in case we get tied up in somewhere like Iraq, and one of the other tinhats decides to play rough in the neighborhood. I'd also encourage another two to four reserve/Guard divisions be added. I know personally that the military was cut too deeply, too fast, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We're still trying to recover. It's slow, it's painful, and it's expensive. It's also NECESSARY. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-1-7 9:31:06 PM |
| #8 The Army found it outside a Mini Mart... It's really mine. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-1-7 6:20:01 PM |
| #7 I thought TIME, given their bias, was unworthy to name the US Army as 'Person of the Year'. Well Rummy turned them down prior. So the PC cover pic was a 'coincidence'? HA! |
| Posted by: DANEgerus 2004-1-7 6:13:52 PM |
| #6 #4 He's also smart enough to know TIME would manage to smear him while pretending to pay tribute. So true. |
| Posted by: B 2004-1-7 5:59:12 PM |
| #5 His only real flaw is an annoying tendancy towards penny-pinching (He's STILL trying to bring the war in on budget, without increasing the number of active duty troops in the Army). He tends to go deaf whenever someone in the service tells him we need more than 500,000 fulltime troops. Is that politically even possible? To pay, train and equip an additional 500,000 troops is going to cost (at say, $100,000 apiece per year) another $50 billion a year.* * I know this is a way low estimate, because roughly $50 billion of additional - i.e. on top of their normal - funding was appropriated for the forces in Iraq alone, which number only 125,000. Picture a total increase of $200 billion for that 500,000 troops, and we're probably in the right ballpark. It's not that we can't afford it - the question is whether it's necessary. As soon as Iraqis get their government up and going, we can extract most of our troops from Iraq, leaving a division or so there. Note that we have done the same with other governments starting from scratch including Greece and South Korea during the Cold War period. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-1-7 4:21:29 PM |
| #4 He's also smart enough to know TIME would manage to smear him while pretending to pay tribute. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2004-1-7 2:57:51 PM |
| #3 Agreed, Jersey. His only real flaw is an annoying tendancy towards penny-pinching (He's STILL trying to bring the war in on budget, without increasing the number of active duty troops in the Army). He tends to go deaf whenever someone in the service tells him we need more than 500,000 fulltime troops. Still, that's a minor flaw, and one I hope he can be broken of if/when Bush wins a second term. Yeah. He's got a pair. Ed. |
| Posted by: Ed Becerra 2004-1-7 2:19:28 PM |
| #2 Yup, this is why the internal leftists hate him and the international crazies are suffering high pucker-factor syndrome. They don't understand integrity because they don't have any. |
| Posted by: 4thInfVet 2004-1-7 2:09:43 PM |
| #1 Not only does this guy have a pair that clang like church bells, but he is honorable as well. Don't see nearly enough of that from public figures nowadays. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-1-7 1:09:42 PM |