Rumsfeld's Remarks

Today Donald Rumsfeld, the man who orchestrated the disaster in Iraq, accused the administration's critics as suffering from "moral and intellectual confusion'' about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.

That's an interesting statement from a man that invaded a secular nation with a Sunni head of state in response to an attack on America by Al-Qaeda. He makes the absurd link of appeasing Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. The result: Saddam is in a cell but Osama bin Laden is still at large. Iraq, which was not a threat to America before we invaded, is now so dangerous that it's front page news across America when an American child visits Iraq and is not beheaded.

Rumsfeld talks about a "new type of fascism" and mentions a string of attacks since 9/11. In the process he fails to distinguish between Saddam's Iraq and Al-Qaeda, implicitly tying the war in Iraq - the source of the criticism he is attacking - with the war on terror.

He also criticizes the media for not reporting on all the positive news out of Iraq. Maybe that's because there isn't any. Maybe it is now to dangerous for a journalist in Iraq to leave their hotel.

It's exactly this kind of absurd dishonesty from Rumsfeld that makes the war in Iraq so hopeless. We can't possibly change course in that failed endeavor without first changing our Secretary of Defense. All other approaches are worthless minus that first major step.

- Stephen Elliott