Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called the worst leader by former US top military officer

The US had no reason to invade Iraq in 2003, and only did so because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration, says Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served for four years as the US's top military officer.

Shelton, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, makes the comment in Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, a soon-to-be-published memoir reviewed at Foreign Policy by Thomas E. Ricks.

"President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect Americans from Saddam's evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security," Shelton writes in his memoir.

According to Ricks, Shelton states that, in order to get the war going, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "elbowed aside Gen. Richard Myers and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also intimidated and flattered Gen. Tommy R. Franks while working directly with him, and so basically went to war without getting the advice of his top military advisors."

The result, Shelton writes, was a war plan that amounted to a "fiasco."

Shelton reportedly saves his harshest criticisms for Rumsfeld himself, who he said had "the worst style of leadership I witnessed in 38 years of service."

After his first meeting with Rumsfeld, Shelton recalls thinking, "We're going to need some heavy-duty cleaning supplies if all we're going to do is waste time having pissing contests like this." When Rumsfeld was proven wrong in a meeting, Shelton says, he wouldn't admit it, but rather would press on and do "his best to stay afloat amid the bullshit he was shoveling out."

At one point, Rumsfeld utterly rejected a plan for how to deal with Iraqi attacks on U.S. warplanes in the old "no-fly zones." Shelton liked the plan how it was, so when ordered to revamp it, he let it sit on his desk for a couple of weeks, and then sent it back to the defense secretary with a new label on it: "Rumsfeld Auto-Response Matrix." "He loved every word of it," Shelton reports with unconcealed contempt.

Shelton goes on to criticize the Bush administration's assertions about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

"Spinning the possible possession of WMDs as a threat to the United States in the way they did is, in my opinion, tantamount to intentionally deceiving the American people," Shelton writes.

Ricks notes that "[t]hese are pretty serious charges, given that they come from the man who was the nation's top military officer for four years immediately preceding 9/11."

Ricks also reports that Shelton has less-than-kind words for Sen. John McCain, who Shelton writes "had a screw loose because normal people just didn't behave in that manner."

In another part of the memoir, Shelton asserts that "[t]he John McCain that I knew was subject to wild mood swings and would break into erratic temper tantrums in the middle of a normal conversation."

Republican governor hypocritally accepts stimulus funds after filing a lawsuit to prevent those funds from being spent

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) is breaking a major pledge as he quietly reaps $97.5 million in federal stimulus funds to extend unemployment benefits to countless individuals in the Palmetto State.

Just over a year ago, Sanford warned that the $700 billion aid package "ain't that far from a thing called slavery."

Prior to making the criticism, the South Carolina Governor called supporters of the stimulus measure "the real fringe."

"I think in this instance I would humbly suggest that the real fringe are those that are supporting the stimulus," explained Sanford shortly after the funding program was approved. "It is not at all in keeping with the principles that made this country great, not at all in keeping with economic reality, not in keeping with a stable dollar, and not in keeping with the sentiments of most of this country."

The outgoing South Carolina Governor even took his fight against the stimulus to court by filing a lawsuit to stop stimulus spending" based on the justification that "legislature has overstepped authority under federal law."

Now, Sanford is poised to accept millions of federal dollars, which will not have to be paid back, to provide financial assistance to part-time workers in South Carolina and individuals who left their jobs to care for a sick family member.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis signaled that the funds would be deposited into the state's financially troubled unemployment trust fund this week.

South Carolina lawmakers have found themselves struggling to combat sky-high joblessness in the state in recent months.

Former republican speaker Gingrich cheated on His wife while making speeches about "Family Values": Gingrich told his wife ‘It Doesn’t Matter What I Do’

In his recently published book and in speaking engagements, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly warns that President Obama’s “secular, socialist machine” is threatening to destroy America by undermining the Judeo-Christian “values” upon which the country was built. But while Gingrich chastises the supposed erosion of values on the left, his past is tainted by his own contemptible value judgments, including numerous extra-marital affairs, and pressuring a divorce from his first wife while she lay stricken with cancer in a hospital bed.

In a new Esquire profile, Gingrich’s second wife Marianne, whom he cheated on with his current wife, Callista,  breaks her twelve year silence on her relationship with Gingrich to reveal a portrait of man who understood the deep hypocrisy of his actions, but simply didn’t care:

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.   

                               

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.“

Marianne, who was Gingrich’s “closest advisor” during his reign in the 1990s, went on to say that Gingrich “believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected.” But of course, as Gingrich himself demanded when he led a crusade to impeach President Clinton for personal infidelity, politicians’ private lives are inevitably connected to their public ones. Nonetheless, Gingrich has himself admitted to continuing his illicit affair with Callista, 23 years his junior, while simultaneously prosecuting Clinton’s adultery.

Perhaps Gingrich has no qualms about committing the sins he rails against because he doesn’t really believe in what he preaches. Esquire’s John Richardson notes that despite Gingrich’s apocalyptic rhetoric, when encountering radical conservative activists, Gingrich “over and over again…takes the long view and becomes the very soul of probity.” “I wouldn’t be able to describe what his real principles are,” former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards said of the former speaker. “I never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power.”