Confronting Rumsfeld

Some Huffington Post commenters who admire Code Pink's moxie think the mere willingness to insult Donald Rumsfeld to his face is a great accomplishment. It is not. It trivializes his alleged crimes to showily spew inane jargon, especially when nothing else is included in the presentation.

It's not as if it would be overly burdensome to inject damning evidence into a verbal ambush of Rumsfeld. That's what ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern did when he found himself in a position to upbraid the manipulative master of war.

During an audience Q&A session at a 2006 public forum in Atlanta, McGovern seized the opportunity to grill Rumsfeld about having described evidence of WMD as "bullet-proof," and about having told ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "We know where they [WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west south and north somewhat."

Well-intentioned but undisciplined activists should compare McGovern's Rummy moment to Code Pink's recent stunt, and take note of which encounter more greatly damaged the target:

Jeff Norman blogs at CitizenJeff.com.