Donald Rumsfeld: mendacious, fallacious, and disputatious

Rumsfeld is now (CDT) giving what I’d say is his worst interview performance ever. He’s on the Lehrer News Hour, being grilled by the mild-mannered Lehrer himself.

Highlights include the following syllogism:

1. The USSR had 300,000 troops in Afghanistan.
2. They lost.
3. Therefore, we can’t increase the number of troops we have in Iraq, because then we would have almost 300,000 and we would also lose.

And the following quote, verbatim: “I don’t do politics.”

And really lovely exchange where Lehrer caused Rummy to completely flip out by asking why it’s taking so long to suppress the Ba’athist resistance. Boy, did he not like that.

And of course a near-infinite number of rhetorical questions. And he closed with a classic rendition of the fly-paper theory: “we’re fighting them in Baghad, which is a whale of a lot better than fighting them in Boise.”

To which I can only say, a whale of a lot better? What the hell does that mean?

UPDATE: Ronk over at Kos's place has links to the transcript and audio and video versions. As long as I'm updating, I'll add another fab Rummyism from the interview: Lehrer asks about the dozen or so attacks US troops are facing each day in Iraq. Rumsfeld says not to worry, because "They last two or three minutes."

Filed under: politics