No wonder the White House has been keeping Donald Rumsfeld out of the public’s view. He returned to the spotlight for a speech late last week and, true to form, embarrassed himself again.
First, the Defense Secretary seemed to be terribly confused about our enemies.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld mixed up Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech Friday.
Among other things, Rumsfeld talked about the world just before the Sept. 11 attacks, whose third anniversary is today. In Afghanistan, he told the National Press Club, “the leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Masoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein, by Osama bin Laden, Taliban’s co-conspirator.”
Ahmed Shah Masoud, who opposed the ruling Taliban, was killed by suspected Al Qaeda operatives — not Hussein — two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Later, Rumsfeld said, “Saddam Hussein, if he’s alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we’ve not seen him on a video since 2001.”
Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq; Bin Laden has not been found.
I know Bush has said (incorrectly) that “you can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” but this is ridiculous.
Just as importantly, if not more so, Rumsfeld returned to the ol’ Sen. James Inhofe line to justify American abuses of prisoners under our care.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to allegations that he fostered a climate that led to the prisoner-abuse scandal, said yesterday that the military’s mistreatment of detainees was not as bad as what terrorists have done.
“Does it rank up there with chopping someone’s head off on television?” he asked. “It doesn’t.”
Rumsfeld, like other administration officials who’ve used the same argument, clearly fail to appreciate how offensive it is to put the United States on the same moral plane as al Queda terrorists. Maybe Rumsfeld should create some new Pentagon bumper stickers that exclaim: “We’re not quite as bad as our enemy!”
I liked it better when Rumsfeld was hiding.