Top 25 Missing from Rumsfeld's Obituary

Rumsfeld was a poster boy for revolving door politics alternately serving as corporate profiteer and creating policy that delivered power and fortunes.

Spencer Ackerman has one of the most honest obituaries for Donald Rumsfeld. His Daily Beast portrait is an unvarnished reminder of the carnage, cruelty and victims. Accurate history is critical, especially since corporate media has embraced America’s war criminals and architects of our Stasi surveillance state as guardians of freedom.

Because we live in an age where so much content is produced and too much of value is lost, both by accident and design, my aim is to highlight the valuable reporting and lesser known history. Donald Rumsfeld has been on my dirtbag list for two decades and my archive of related evidence is quite full. There’s no better use than to compile a list of never forget “known knowns“ to Rumsfeld’s warmongering legacy for posterity.

1. Missing Money ~ September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld declared the war on waste at the Pentagon calling it the greatest threat to our National Security. There was $2.3 trillion in missing money approximately 25% of all spending. Rummy’s announcement was the day before “9-11 changed everything“ and waste was rarely mentioned again. Honest insiders like Catherine Austin Fitts have updated the story with regularity as part of her focus on Federal corruption. Her last update was $21 trillion about $65,000 for every American.

2. Dan Rather - Rumsfeld Partnership ~ Growing partnerships between our media and military industrial complex make this story ripe for conspiracy theory. For old timers it’s one more confirmation that the entire Washington establishment is an incestuous community where there are rarely true adversaries of power or advocates for citizens. Even when we get the truth it’s one soundbite quickly lost in the big picture like this gem from December 21, 2003 issue of TIME magazine.

3. Outsourcing Torture ~ Monumental investigative reporting by Jane Mayer in Outsourcing Torture made clear in 2005 that America’s leaders had no respect for The Constitution, international law, human rights or The Geneva Conventions. These lawless “public servants“ were protected by Congress and the media which has led us to where we are now where Julian Assange is tortured in Belmarsh for journalism in the public interest while Rumsfeld moved from running black site prisons to sharing a ranch with Dan Rather.

4. Trading with the Enemy ~ Donald Rumsfeld was an executive director for ABB (Asea Brown Boveri) the company that got the contract to build the two light water reactor stations in North Korea. The $200 million contract was signed in January 2000 and Rummy pocketed $190,000 before joing Bush Administration.

5. Arming the Enemy ~ According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska while Rumsfeld was contracting for ABB reactors. The history of Wall Street funding both sides of a conflict is as old as the CIA which was formed as OSS from the ranks of blue blooded banksters of Brown Brothers Harriman exposed as Hitler’s funding angels with Union Bank Corporation with patriarch Prescott Bush profiting.

6. War Crimes Trial ~ Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the "Accused") for criminal policy and practice of extraordinary rendition and torture.

7. Endless War Blueprint ~ Donald Rumsfeld was a signatory to PNAC a group now commonly referred to as NeoCons. The PNAC NeoCons drew up a blueprint that has played out as the ongoing military actions in countries across the Middle East beginning with the Iraq War and fueled by lies corporate media amplified.

8. Mount Misery ~ In a small vacation town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland then Secretary Rumsfeld and VP Cheney had summer homes and the houses have names. Rumsfeld's house was Mount Misery. June 2006 New York Times vacation section explained Mount Misery’s name reflected the torture practiced by it’s owner to break slaves. They omitted Rumsfeld’s own torture victims.

9. No Blood No Foul Policy ~ Many remember abuse pictures from Abu Ghraib made public in April 2004 but the story of Rumsfeld’s “defense tactics“ is far darker. Details of The Black Room and Task Force 6-26 are horrific war crimes conveyed by the New York Times with the gentlest phrasing possible.

   Brutal inhumanity & unquestionable criminality is termed “harsh interrogation practices“ or “mistreated prisoners“ and “off limits even to the Red Cross“ is offered as an excuse for how little is known about the extent of the crimes. “NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.“

10. WHIG ~White House Propaganda Group ~ Office of Special Plans propaganda under the moniker of WHIG for White House Information Group was a Rumsfeld, Cheney NeoCons brainchild. National Security Archive has extensive FOIA detail which should instill a permanent distrust of information categorized as “defense intelligence“ but looks like a blueprint for American media in retrospect. Money talks. An intern for the Lincoln Group recalls driving through Baghdad with $3 million in cash in the trunk of a car, "separated into thirty plastic-wrapped $100,000 blocks" to pay for planted news stories.

11. FDA Deadly Aspartame Influence ~ Toxic profiteering isn’t limited to the battlefield; domestic killing is lucrative too. For 16 years, the Food and Drug Administration denied approval of aspartame because of compelling evidence it contributed to brain tumors and other serious disabilities. In January 1997 Gilead Sciences board member Donald H. Rumsfeld became its new Chairman. Shortly after his Washington clout paid off and aspartame was quickly approved by FDA Commissioner Arthur Hayes over the objections of the FDA's Public Board of Inquiry. Following the aspartame approval Arthur Hayes joined NutraSweet's public relations firm under a 10-year contract at $1,000 a day.

12. Agent Orange Pharmers ~ Donald Rumsfeld reportedly earned $12 million from increased stock value when G. D. Searle & Company was sold to Monsanto in 1985. This merger ushered in an era of cancer causing, petrochemical companies becoming leading producers of foods and drugs where illness and treatments are one corporate source. In addition to Monsanto’s legacy of global PCB pollution they were a primary contractor in Vietnam War Operation Ranch Hand supplying Agent Orange herbicide the deadlier form of glyphosate used with gmo crops.

13. Constitutional Coup Project 908 ~ From WikiLeaks we know details of the covert coup undermining democracy that fall under the official title Continuity of Government. “AR 500-3 demonstrates that from the very first moments after being installed in office, the Bush regime was involved in a "controlled demolition" of the U.S. Constitution. Since the late 1980s, Rumsfeld was a habitué of COG exercises along with Vice President Dick Cheney. As investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn revealed in his definitive political biography of the former Defense Secretary: This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld....”

14. Pandemic Practice ~ Long before COVID pandemic planning and panic induced profiteering were rewarding Rumsfeld. Plans were in place for closing schools, lock-downs and military enforced quarantines. In addition to the vast expansion of Executive powers under Continuity of Government rules Rumsfeld was a stakeholder in Gilead’s Tamiflu as an H5N1 remedy. Making millions on pandemic fears resulted in Rummy Flu moniker for H5N1 virus that never posed a human threat but selling fear is strategy you can take to the bank.

15. Weaponizing Vaccines ~ Rumsfeld and NeoCon cronies never let a good crisis go to waste. Anthrax was another terrorist threat traumatizing Americans in the wake of September 11, 2001 events. While the source of weaponized anthrax mailed to media figures and Members of Congress who opposed the Iraq War was never found, the weaponized strain implicated US bio-weapons labs and the panic translated to windfall profits for unproven and unapproved vaccine for inhaled anthrax. Several lawsuits followed mass troop resignations in refusal while Rumsfeld isnsited it was safe. Link to LA Times report has details.

16. Sole Source Anthrax Vaccine Contractor BioPort ~ Despite ongoing failures to meet FDA standards BioPort was given ongoing Pentagon contracts and operate as sole producre of anthrax vaccines. They have been renamed Emergent Biosolutions and are a key player in the COVID vaccine program in America with details in Military Times ~ Past failures lead to vaccine improvements.

17. National Small Pox Preparedness Project ~ This produced vaccines for 500,000 troops in preparation for invasion of Iraq. Like the rest of the WMD claims made Saddam’s BioWeapons were never found. Though Rumsfeld was replaced at Gilead he retained stock and Gilead's Smallpox Profits were helped greatly in 2001 as policy directives worked to make the smallpox vaccine REQUIRED by all first responders and military personell. Facinating 2003 backstory for small pox threat “overseeing President Bush's mass vaccination policy was another "Dark Winter" alumnus, Jerry Hauer. Hauer, a former director of Kroll Associates - the security firm at the helm when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001.

18. September 11 NORAD War Games ~ Trillions have been spent for America’s air defense. It is standard operating procedure to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. Over the course of 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times. Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. 1  

    A June 1, 2001 order from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff changed proceedure so all requests from FAA for assistance in suspected hijacking be forwarded to the Secretary of Defense for approval. Rumsfeld would get those calls on September 11, 2001 and could have ended the confusion about the real highjacking by calling VP Cheney who was directing simulated exercises at the same time. ~ 2006 Vanity Fair “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes”

    

    19. Project BioShield Act 2004 ~ The Project BioShield Act of 2004 (S. 15) became law on July 21, 2004 "to provide protections and countermeasures against chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that may be used in a terrorist attack against the United States by giving the National Institutes of Health contracting flexibility, infrastructure improvements, and expediting the scientific peer review process, and streamlining the Food and Drug Administration approval process of countermeasures."

        In other words, the FDA may now recklessly approve inadequately tested, potentially dangerous vaccines and other drugs if ever the Secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) or Defense (DOD) declare a national emergency, whether or not one exists and regardless of whether treatments available are safe and effective.” Sound familiar to COVID pandemic?

20. Star Wars Defense - Stephen Cambone “chief henchman” for Rumsfeld Commission on Ballistic Missile Defense “Recall that in the early days of the Bush administration, Star Wars and the obliteration of the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty were the twin obsessions of the Rumsfeld gang at the Pentagon.“

21. Office of Net Assessment ~ How CIA created Google and the super stars who shaped policy for expanding covert surveillance state. Rumsfeld along with other political heavyweights were part of the shadow government group Highlands Forum “an off the record space for some of the most prominent members of the shadow intelligence community to convene with senior US government officials, alongside other leaders in relevant industries.” great report by Nafeez Ahmed.

    

22. Iraqi Freedom CPA Order 81 ~ The 2000 prewar plan included revised copyright and patent laws for Iraq and Monsanto's "reconstruction team" replace heirloom seeds from the cradle of civilization with patent protected, herbicide dependent GMO crops. Post invasion Coalition Provisional Authority imposed rules that turned historic, sustainable farming practice of saving seeds for planting in the future, into a model where every seed has a fee and cannot be saved and every bite of food produced profits petrochemical corps in perpetuity. William Engdhal’s 2005 report is an essential read for privatizing Iraq’s food supply.

23. Hillbilly Armor ~ During a meeting with troops in Kuwait Rumsfeld had a question from the 278th Regimental Combat Team, which was about to head into Iraq in a long convoy of unarmored vehicles. They asked Rumsfeld why soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal to up-armor our vehicles?"

    

24. The Burn Pits ~ We only know about this killing of American troops thanks to Veteran and Gitmo whistleblower Joseph Hickman’s book, The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers. Hickman’s first book Murder at Camp Delta reported CIA killing prisoners indefinately detained in GITMO since early 2000 when war on terror became invasion of Iraq and expanded war in Afghanistan.

    They are called “this generation’s Agent Orange” — the open fire pits operated on over 230 U.S. military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan during our wars there. Every kind of waste — plastics; batteries; old ordnance; asbestos; pesticide containers; tires; biomedical, chemical and nuclear waste; dead animals; human feces; body parts; and corpses — was incinerated in them.

25. The Rumsfeld Group Rendon PR ~ Invauable resource History Commons Timeline under John Rendon profile ~ Late May 2001: Pentagon PR Chief Forms ‘Rumsfeld Group’ to Manage Public Relations for War on Terror.

Newly hired Defense Department public relations chief Victoria Clarke (see May 2001) begins a series of regular meetings with a number of Washington’s top private PR specialists and lobbyists.

As censorship efforts expand and more history is destroyed it is important to understand the corporate-government-media troika that has worked under the guise of National Security to transform a government of the people to a mafia run by provate contractors and toxic profiteers.