Rumsfeld first Bush administration casualty of the Democratic sweep

On October 24, WMR wrote the following:

"There is something afoot, in a very Shakespearean way, in the White House. Preparing for a post-election massacre of the GOP and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, two factions are emerging within the White House. One is the neo-con faction surrounding potential scapegoat Vice President Dick Cheney. This faction includes Cheney's own staffers and his and Rumsfeld's sympathizers in the Pentagon, National Security Council, State Department, and media and think tanks. The other is the faction coalescing around the other potential scapegoat -- George W. Bush. This is the most interesting faction as it consists of George H. W. Bush and his closest friends -- James Baker III, Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Robert Gates, Alan Simpson, Sandra Day O'Connor, and other past luminaries of the George H. W. Bush administration."

Bush's choice to replace Rumsfeld is one of his new inner-circle advisers, Robert Gates. The circling of the wagons in the pending Bush-Cheney battle has begun. Many neocons, including Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, sensing that Cheney and the neocon cause is in trouble, have recently backed down from their early cheerleading for the Iraq war.

Wayne Madsen Report