Things That Make You Go "WTF?!?"
This interview with Donald Rumsfeld has so many things wrong with it that I just don't have the time to go over them all (especially when I've gotten some complaints that my posts are a little too, ahem, long). So I'll just cover a couple of the more salient points.
Rumsfeld was asked why the insurgency has grown so much. Rumsfeld's response was:
The thing that got me worse that, though, was when Rumsfeld was asked if the security situation in Iraq is better today than it was on the day after the war ended ("Mission Accomplished", boys!). Rumsfeld's response:
Wait, let me try that again. Here's another way of putting it: all evidence indicates that things are getting worse, but clearly, things are getting better!
Screw evidence. You only need evidence if you're a member of the reality-based community.
So why, exactly, is it that anyone still believes that Rumsfeld has any credibility left, whatsoever?
Rumsfeld was asked why the insurgency has grown so much. Rumsfeld's response was:
I think people who come up with those numbers are pulling them out of the air. I don't know how you know those. I don't know those. I hear different numbers from different people at different times and then I hear the same people changing their numbers.That's funny, because Brooking's Iraq Index indicates that the insurgency has grown from around 5,000 in November of 2003 to something like 16,000 to 20,000 plus in the last year. And where does Brookings get its numbers? Why, it gets them from General John P. Abizaid, and Major General Raymond T. Odierno, and General Richard B. Myers, and Director of Defense Intelligence Lowell Jacoby. So, according to Rumsfeld, these guys are just "pulling them out of the air". That, or Rumsfeld is pussyfooting around the question by trying to cast doubt on the very numbers reported by his officers.
The thing that got me worse that, though, was when Rumsfeld was asked if the security situation in Iraq is better today than it was on the day after the war ended ("Mission Accomplished", boys!). Rumsfeld's response:
Well, statistically no, but clearly it has been getting better as we've gone along.In other words, all of our metrics indicate that things are getting worse: the insurgency is stronger, assassinations are up, car bombings are up, casualties are up, more and more Iraqi troops are deserting or joining the insurgency, out of the very small number we've even managed to train, and so on and so forth. But things are getting better, clearly!
Wait, let me try that again. Here's another way of putting it: all evidence indicates that things are getting worse, but clearly, things are getting better!
Screw evidence. You only need evidence if you're a member of the reality-based community.
So why, exactly, is it that anyone still believes that Rumsfeld has any credibility left, whatsoever?
posted by The Commentariart at 11:10 AM
2 Comments:
Credibility?
I think that any information that comes out of Iraq has little credibility. Either the Liberal media, the conservative media or some blogger puts their spin on it, and if it came from our government, their government or a third party government, you can be sure they're all spinning too.
Ratatosk
Yes, but if the government's spinning those numbers it's going to be in a downward direction which doesn't help Rumsfelt's 'argument' at all.
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