‘I Have Never Painted A Rosy Picture’

August 3, 2006

After initially balking at the invitation, Defense Secretary [tag]Donald Rumsfeld[/tag] reversed course and agreed to speak to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee today. Given his position, he might as well have stuck to his original plans.

Sen. [tag]Hillary Clinton[/tag] asked Rumsfeld a series of aggressive questions, in particular noting his track record of “assurances that have, frankly, proven to be unfulfilled.”

Rumsfeld, naturally, disagreed. “I don’t think that’s true. I have never painted a [tag]rosy picture[/tag],” the Defense Secretary said with a straight face. “I have been very measured in my words, and you’d have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been excessively optimistic.”

ThinkProgress found ample evidence to the contrary (no word from TP about whether their efforts represented a “dickens of a time”).

Dec. 18, 2002: KING: What’s the current situation in Afghanistan? RUMSFELD: It is encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.

Feb. 7, 2003: “It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

Feb. 20 2003: “‘Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?’ Jim Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS’ The News Hour. ‘There is no question but that they would be welcomed,’ Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces.”

Mar. 30, 2003: “It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

“Measured” in his words? I don’t think so.

“Measured” in his words?

Given that it’s Rumsfeld we’re talking about, I can only think he intended something to do with cadence.

  • Rumsfeld is the most consistent serial denier in the entire administration, and that’s saying something. If he proclaimed before thousands with absolute surety that the sun would rise in the morning and it didn’t, he would state that he absolutely never made the claim that it would.

    Of course, if the sun didn’t rise we’d all be in total doo-doo anyway, but it illustrates the point.

  • So did Hillary have her own list to read for him and ask him to explain how those statements weren’t a rosy picture? Because they sure look that way to me…

  • Consider the following, copied from http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2006/08/accountability-watch_02.html:

    It’s time to revisit a few choice tidbits from the February 2006 report to Congress on Iraq, as submitted by the Secretary of Defense:

    1. “Terrorist attacks have failed to create and spread sectarian conflict.” (page 3)

    2. “Increasingly robust Iraqi political institutions will provide peaceful means for reconciliation and bridging divides.” (page 9)

    3. Insurgents have “failed to deter development of the Iraq Security forces” and “failed to damage Iraqi public trust in the Iraq security forces.” (page 23)

    4. “The overarching term ‘insurgency’ is less of a useful construct today” because “previous synergy among enemy groups is breaking apart.” (page 24)

    The above wasn’t written in 2003, 2004, or even “last throes” mid-2005. It was written six months ago.

    . . . Anyone who endorsed that report should be out of a job by now. Donald Rumsfeld submitted it to Congress (and who do you think might have penned the words “the overarching term ‘insurgency’ is less of a useful construct today”?).

  • You misinterpret this quote:

    “It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

    Rumsfeld says “I doubt six months”, meaning he thinks it will be six years.

  • Too good to pass up here.

    I beg your pardon I never promised you a simple cakewake
    Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little blood sometime
    When you take you gotta give so kill and be killed and let go oh oh oh oh
    I beg your pardon I never promised you an easy invasion

    I could promise you things like OBL’s head
    But you don’t find terrorist growin’ on stalks of poppies
    So you better think it over
    Well, if sweet talking you could make it come true
    Dick Cheney would have the world right now on a silver platter
    But what would it matter
    So smile for a while and let’s be jolly love shouldn’t be so melancholy
    Come along and share the fire fights while we can

    I beg your pardon I never promised you an easy win
    Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be blood’n guts sometime
    I beg your pardon I never promised you an easy win

    I could sing you a tune and promise you an easy victory
    But if that’s what it takes to hold you I’d just as soon let you go
    But there’s one thing I want you to know
    You’d better look before you invade as quagmires run deep
    And there won’t always be someone there to pull you out
    And you know what I’m talking about
    So smile for a while and let’s be jolly love shouldn’t be so melancholy
    Come along and share the war profits while we can

    I beg your pardon I never promised you oil profits
    Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be fuck ups sometime…..
    I beg your pardon I never promised you a major fuck up
    Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little death sometime….

  • Boy, Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria wasn’t kidding when he said Rumsfeld was “slightly deranged” and seemed “on another planet.” Don’t these guys know that trying to pretend you never said something doesn’t work when some schmoe with a computer can just Google a transcript of you saying that thing you say you never said? Or maybe they just don’t care.

    Let’s not forget also when Rumsfeld downplayed the casulties in Iraq by comparing Baghdad to D.C. Funny, I must have missed when crooks in D.C. got access to rocket launchers, assault rifles and bombs.

  • A “measure” of Rum…sfield, for all sailors on the good ship Titaniraq.

    Why didn’t Clinton have these quotes at the ready? Why didn’t she have rebuttal material at hand like lawyers are supposed to do? These quotes would have been dynamite at the site of the hearings in the here and now immedicacy of it all.

    PS Great series on the oceans in the LA Times the past few days.
    http://www.latimes.com/oceans

  • Not to digress, but I just read at Google News that the US has offered to train and equip the Lebanese Army, whenever the fighting there stops. Supposedly so that the forces can take control of all of the country.

    First off, Looking at the slam-bang job the US is doing with the Iraqis, does the White House expect the Lebanese to really get excited over this?

    Secondly, would this force be equipped to just handle operations against Hezbollah, or would it be able to fend off outside forces?

    Thirdly, if the mighty Israeli Defense Force, with logistics pouring in from the US, has its hands full with Hezbollah, what good could the 60,000-man Lebanese Army do?

    And lastly, where will the money for this scheme come from? The Army budget?

  • And let’s not forget Cheney, who said the war would last “weeks, not months.”

  • It’s too bad that the quotes provided above could not have been made available to Clinton during the questioning. Could you imagine how great it would have been for her to come back after he said “…you’d have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been excessively optimistic” with these quotes?

    These people will just keep right on lying because they see no consequences to their lies. I think they need to be treated the way a puppy that piddles on the carpet is treated: Rub their noses in the pee as quickly as possible otherwise they never learn. In this case, the way to rub their noses in it is to call their lies as soon as they say them and back it up with undeniable proof.

    I wonder what it would take to set up a system whereby each person on a Congressional investigative panel could have 5-10 people researching for them and emailing them with information that can be used during their questioning. Something like that would certainly make these instances of oversight and investigation more interesting.

  • Any guy whose every other word is “Gee!” “Golly willickers!” “Goodness Gracious!” “Crimey BeJimey!” and such, doesn’t know the meaning of “measured”.

  • In my vision of a better world, Rummy would have made that comment, and Hil would have said, “Oh, really. Let’s see…” and turned to her wireless laptop, tapped a few keys, and proven that it didn’t take more than 30 seconds.

    For all that Senators seem to love the sound of their own voices, they seem incapable of playing ‘gotcha!’ After all, how hard would it have been to predict Rummy would baldly lie, and to come equipped?

    And why hasn’t someone been updating Rep. Waxman’s ‘Iraq on the Record’ searchable database? Are they interested in taking back the country, or not?

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