Here is the bit with Rummy and his stammering answer to why he said what he said and then why he didn't say what he said....sorry...it's contagious....
Dan
---taken from the New Republic online---
Check out the transcript of yesterday's "Face The Nation." Donald Rumsfeld faced off against Bob Schieffer and Thomas Friedman, and in response to a straight-forward question--Scheiffer asked, "If [Iraq] did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, ... why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?"--he retreated into rank historical revisionism:
Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. ... if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.
And, like a gift from the Gods of Nexis, Friedman produced precisely such a citation:
Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. It says "some have argued that the nu"--this is you speaking--"that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."
Sec. RUMSFELD: And--and...
Mr. FRIEDMAN: It was close to imminent.
Sec. RUMSFELD: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...
Mr. FRIEDMAN: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
I can only imagine that the much-abused Pentagon reporters watching TV that morning were simultaneously sobbing with joy and praising Friedman's name to the heavens. This might be the first time--and correct me if I'm wrong--that Rumsfeld was caught point-blank trying to deny saying something that was brought right in front of him. He tried to blather a response, but to little success:
Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know. David Kay said we're about 85 percent there. I don't know if that's the right percentage. But the Iraqi Survey Group--we've got 1,200 people out there looking. It's a country the size of California. He could have hidden his--enough chemical or biol--enough biological weapons in the hole that--that we found Saddam Hussein in to kill tens of thousands of people. So--so it's not as though we have certainty today.
This has to be seen to be believed. Luckily, the Center for American Progress has posted the video clip.
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Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832
