{"id":7323,"date":"2006-05-05T09:10:23","date_gmt":"2006-05-05T13:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7323"},"modified":"2006-05-05T09:10:23","modified_gmt":"2006-05-05T13:10:23","slug":"donald-rumsfeld-meets-ray-mcgovern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/donald-rumsfeld-meets-ray-mcgovern\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Rumsfeld meets Ray McGovern"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t seen it, Defense Secretary [tag]Donald Rumsfeld[\/tag] spoke in Atlanta yesterday and had a few substantive exchanges<\/a> with an interested and well-informed member of the audience. Well, at least the questions were substantive.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Atlanta today, Secretary of Defense Donald [tag]Rumsfeld[\/tag] was sharply questioned about his pre-war claims about WMD in Iraq. An audience member confronted Rumsfeld with his 2003 claim about WMD, “We know where they are.” Rumsfeld falsely claimed he never said it. The audience member then read Rumsfeld’s quote back to him, leaving the defense secretary speechless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The audience member specifically reminded Rumsfeld that he had said, on national television, “We know where [the WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” Rumsfeld claimed that he never made the comment, but there is, of course, video of him using these exact words<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here was another interesting exchange:<\/p>\n

Q: Well we’re talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.<\/p>\n

Rumsfeld: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.<\/p>\n

Q: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That’s also\u2026<\/p>\n

Rumsfeld: He was also in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

Q: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And who was this well-informed interrogator? Former CIA analyst [tag]Ray McGovern[\/tag]<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

CNN anchor Paula Zahn spoke hours later with the former analyst, Ray [tag]McGovern[\/tag], a member of a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity that has been critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war.<\/p>\n

ZAHN: Did you go to this speech today with the intent of challenging Secretary Rumsfeld?<\/p>\n

MCGOVERN: I had no predetermined objectives. I just wanted to see what he had to say. But I did get very motivated when the first lady was ejected … from the crowd.<\/p>\n

ZAHN: What was it, then, that you wanted to accomplish by following her rather pointed question?<\/p>\n

MCGOVERN: Well, you know, she talked about lies. And I get very upset when Donald Rumsfeld shakes his head and says, “Lies, gosh, lies. I hate it when somebody says that our president would tell lies.” Of course, she hadn’t said the president; she said Rumsfeld. But he said that lies are fundamentally destructive of the trust, without which government cannot work. And that’s true. And I found myself really agreeing with that.<\/p>\n

ZAHN: Essentially, what he told you is: I never said exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were. I was referring to, we had a pretty darn good idea where the sites were. … Do you buy what he said today?<\/p>\n

MCGOVERN: His words [in 2003] were: “We know where — where the WMD are. They’re near Tikrit and Baghdad, and north, south, east, and west of there.” That’s a direct quote. And when he used that wonderful non sequitur by looking at the uniformed personnel in the front row and saying: “Well, they went in with protective gear; they certainly thought there were weapons of mass destruction there.” Well, my goodness, of course, they did. Because you, Donald Rumsfeld, told them that they were there. And, you know, it’s not polite to say this, but that was a bald-faced lie. And … he should have owned up to it, if he wants there to be a modicum of trust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good for McGovern. Rumsfeld isn’t confronted nearly enough by these kinds of reality-based arguments, and apparently, gets a little flustered by the opposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t seen it, Defense Secretary [tag]Donald Rumsfeld[\/tag] spoke in Atlanta yesterday and had a few substantive exchanges with an interested and well-informed member of the audience. Well, at least the questions were substantive. Speaking in Atlanta today, Secretary of Defense Donald [tag]Rumsfeld[\/tag] was sharply questioned about his pre-war claims about WMD in Iraq. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}