Results tagged “donaldrumsfeld”

Donald Rumsfeld made a triumphant visit to Boston to sell his book at the Old South Meeting House last night. For some reason, people chose to heckle the former Secretary of Defense. He's selling a book which means he's going to treat everyone to a favorable review of the Bush administration's execution of the War on Terror. He also talked Iraq, a totally different issue than fighting terrorism. One woman attempted a citizen's arrest - true - and held a pink sign that read "War Criminal." It was upside down, though. more ›

Bostonist always has trouble deciding how we feel about well-intentioned but utterly useless projects. So it was with mixed feelings that we learned of House Bill 1881 in the Mass. Legislature, which proposes a statewide resolution supporting the Constitution and condemning the USA PATRIOT Act (which has to be in all capital letters because, annoyingly, it stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools for Intercepting and Obstructing Terrorism"). It's not that we disagree with the message - we are huge fans of the Constitution, having sworn to protect it against all enemies foreign and domestic. But the news lately suggests to us that no amount of haughty scolding from the likes of Massachusetts will dissuade the current administration from its belief that certain constitutional rights (like, for example, being free from unreasonable detention, having a speedy, public trial with a lawyer to defend you, and having due process of law) are all like, totally five-minutes-ago. After all, despite revelations that many of the people being held without charges in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not terrorists, Donald Rumsfeld reiterated last week the necessity to keep the facility up and running for years to come. (It's also not a good sign when government lawyers arguing in favor of indefinite detention have to rely on one of the most shameful and racist actions by the federal government in the last 100 years.) more ›

DCist saw the sign. Our friends in Washington have a little reminder that tells them about the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the start of the conflict in 2003. Today at M.I.T. Dr. Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins talks about his study that attempts to quantify the number of civilians killed during the conflict. The study does not only attempt to find the number that Donald Rumsfeld won’t quantify in any estimate, but goes further to identify the mortality rate as it compared to the pre-war number. The study purports over 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq from March of 2003 to September 2004. Bostonist isn’t sure that this is accurate; we’ve been watching www.iraqbodycount.org while we’ve been bored at work and they’re only up to 18,000. We’re sure that the good Dr. Roberts will state his claim here in the Hub. more ›