If only Rumsfeld knew how awful this sounded

December 9, 2005

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on PBS’ Newshour last night for a pretty substantive discussion. In particular, Jim Lehrer pressed Rumsfeld on the idea that support for the war has fallen because the electorate was set up with a different set of expectations, none of which came to fruition. Rumsfeld disagreed, saying the administration was nothing but responsible.

“I mean, I was very careful. I never predicted any number of deaths or the cost or the length because I’ve looked at a lot of wars, and anyone who tries to do that is going to find themselves wrong, flat wrong. […]

“I don’t know anybody who had any reasonable expectations about the number or the length of the war or the cost of the war. I just don’t — no one I know went out and said these are how those three metrics ought to be considered. And you can take it to the bank.”

There are two ways to look at this, both equally awful. First, as Think Progress noted, Rumsfeld and other top administration officials made all kinds of predictions on those exact same metrics, telling the nation that the war would be short, cheap, and with minimal casualties. Rumsfeld either has a very bad memory or he wasn’t being truthful.

The other angle is the question Atrios raised: why didn’t the Defense Secretary think it was worthwhile for someone at the Pentagon to make cost, casualty, and length predictions about a war?

We can never quite get around that whole dishonesty vs. incompetence debate, can we?

And, of course, Rumsfield was immediately confronted with his prior quoates contradiciting what he said.

No? What a shock.

I did not see the interview so i don’t know. What actually happened after he said this?

  • What actually happened after he said this?

    PBS fortunately posted the transcript (follow the link in the first paragraph). To Lehrer’s credit, there was some decent follow-up.

  • well, this takes us back to the basic problems: they never defined war objectives. they never defined victory. and as a result, they never defined a way that we could assess how long the war might last and what it might cost (in fact, we started shock and awe before congress even asked for some kind of assessment of the costs).

    that all said, Zev somebody or other, Rumsfeld’s number’s whiz at the time, did testify to congress that they expected to be at 30K troops in September, ’03: that’s a good enough example of a prediction for me.

    and it was completely and totally wrong.

  • We can never quite get around that whole dishonesty vs. incompetence debate, can we?

    As the sage once said, “I think it’s both.”

  • “The other angle is the question Atrios raised: why didn’t the Defense Secretary think it was worthwhile for someone at the Pentagon to make cost, casualty, and length predictions about a war?”

    Those numbers were always completely irrelevant to Rummy, Cheney and Bush. There were no casualty, cost and length predictions unacceptable enough to stop the rush to war. I still think that’s true. There is no casualty figure to horrible, no cost too unbearable, no length of time that’s too long, no loss of domestic and international goodwill and support too great that will ever be deemed “unacceptable” enough for this administration to rethink the occupation of Iraq.

  • This is also a lie on another level, because plenty of people did make these assessments, but were either fired, silenced or attacked personally in some way to discredit their views. The rest were just flat out ignored.

    And what the heck is this “take it to the bank” bull…the only thing being taken to the bank are Rummy’s stock sales of GILD, the company he parked himself at in between wars.

  • This is what happens with a breathless, 24-hour, rush-to-the-story news cycle.

    The right way to do this is to *prepare* for these interviews, do research, and to do the old lawyer’s trick: only ask a question if you already know the answer. Then when you get a lie, you can slam the fucker in the face with it.

    If the “interviewer” had time (and staff! and money!) to do homework, he’d have all the Rumsfeld quotes queued up and ready to roll. But news is now a profit centre, and you get sloppy crap like this as a result.

  • Or, how about incompetent liars?! They are incompetent, and they are liars, but they can’t even lie WELL, for goodness sake. A quick Google search on just about anything they say reveals…shock…another lie.

    I’m so sick of this band of criminals.

  • Rummy the Dummy will probably retire soon on a “high” in regards to the war and let it fall apart further on somebody else’s shift. He has to decide where to spend all the money he makes from the millions of dollars of Tamiflu stock he owns. He really is due the blame for mismanaging Bush’s War. Rove managed Bush (his phony facade of intelligence), Cheney managed this administration and Rumsfeld managed Bush’s War. He was the one that took a bad, illegal plan to invade another country and made it worse by “crossing off” from his list many things that would have made the illegal plan have a chance to succeed. He, with Cheney’s support, approved all of the torture done in the US’s name. Then to cover his and his cronies asses, they prosecute the military personnel that are caught implementing the administration’s policies. With the exception of Graner(probably a relative of Cheney’s) and taking pictures, all of the military they tried and convicted were just doing what they were told to do, which had been approved by Rumsfeld.

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