Letters to the Editor
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Ending the culture of politeness
Can we please have an end to this oh-so-polite, can't risk offending the president garbage in our media? Since when do we confuse respect with softball questions? You can ask hard, persistent questions and confront hypocrisy without being an a-hole on camera. And in any case, isn't it past the time when we should be worried about treating this lying, brutal, lawbreaking, spying, corrupt, greed-consumed, delusional, power-mad administration with respect?
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CNN Headline
Here's the headline at CNN.COM:
Rumsfeld strategy speech heckled
So I guess a concerned American citizen presenting the Secretary of Defense that works for him with facts that the media fails to mention is a Bush bashing American hating heckler now. Love that "liberal media".
Regards
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Darth Rumsfeld
I hope it starts moving more quickly now. This is unbelievable, how the people at that conference still supported Rummy. Makes me sick. Good one, erudite inquisitor!!!!
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Rumsfeld's Defense
What has Colbert wrought? More like, what has McClellan wrought?
Rummie was in perfect White House Press Briefing form here.
When times got tough in the press room, McClellan would call on Goyal who is always good for a question on India and Pakistan..Rummy didn't know what each person wanted to ask but in this case, the next person asked Rumsfeld if he could speak about his childhood because he's turned out to be such a great person and we should all learn from him.
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The Necessity for Blunt Questions:
Years ago Wlliam F. Buckley cited the story of a woman who, at an embassy party in Moscow, asked Josef Stalin "When are you going to stop killing people?" He said that we need that kind of bluntness sometimes. Of course, Buckley was a conservative with some principles, and that was before so-called conservatives became rabidly right-wing nuts, far to the right of the John Brch Society that Buckley so disdained.
That example should be held up to the wimps of the Washington press corps who whine that confronting the president with his lies would be, as they say, impolite or as Elisabeth Bumiller believes, too scary to try.
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More "Speaking Truth to Power"
I'll be brief here.
THANK JESUS FOR RAY MCGOVERN!
Thank God that America is waking up from its long trance.
Thank God that the spell is being broken (for most of us)at last.
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ICC
As Rumsfeld was being drilled, I drifted for a moment into seeing this very exchange happening in the Hague, in a trial for these war criminals that are running America. Journalists need to challenge our leadership more as this gentleman did; our country depends on it.
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More smart guys in the room
Is Rumsfeld in collusion with the Lay and Skilling defence team working here in Houston at the Enron trial? Mr Lay and Mr Skilling have forcefully implied that we, the unwashed public, are not quite bright enough to understand the complicated and creative accounting that has brought them before the jury. Rumsfeld and GW have that same exasperated tone when speaking about Iraq. But I see the arrogance eroding. This makes my heart pump a lot faster, in sheer joy.
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ENOUGH ABOUT COLBERT!!!
I GET it. EVeryone at Salon just loved Colbert's little satire the other night. Yes, it was amusing... but thats it! Must it be brought up by you folks every damn time Bush appears in public or tom cruise taxis through manhattan?
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Ray God Bless Him
I met Ray McGovern @ the 9/11 truth convergence in DC what a gentleman and in Bush 1's cabinet the nsc briefer he is well aware of the halls of power and is unaffected by those politics. His goal and what should be all our goal's is patriotic and the preservation of our DEMOCRACY as given to us by our forefathers. Let's all support these patriot's among us.
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Understanding Drew's Dismay
Drew
I don't know about anyone else, but I understand people who are sick of hearing about Colbert. I understand because I have felt the same way since GW and friends decided to bang the war drum and use the media as the chorus.
The drumming becomes a monotonous sound beating in the back of your head that becomes a migraine headache unless you just sway with the beat.
Thank God, the drumming in my head stopped with the sound of a symbol. Yes Drew, I understand your pain, but I hope you get used to it. When you get Washington insiders finding courage and speaking out in public, it is hard to dismiss as just blogging liberals trying to form a mobacracy. Instead, you have to dismiss concise, cogent agruments that counter such gut-wrenching fallacies as non sequitur and slippery slope, ad hominem, bandwagon, and (and this is my favorite) begging the question.
To say that Colbert didn't influence a CIA advisor, who got up and grilled Rumsfeld, is to say I am still going to the beat of war. I missed the symbol. I wish it would stop.
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great questioner
McGovern was an excellent interviewer. He politely let Rumsfeld finish his thoughts, but didn't let him get away with rhetorical gymnastics or misleading statements. It's refreshing to see the art of the followup question revived.
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One more good follow-up question
Too bad they cut McGovern off. He could have asked a question about the link between Rumsfeld's personal visit(s) with Saddam Hussein and Saddam's use of the very chemical weapons Rumsfeld mentioned to McGovern in his non-answer.
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Inquiring Minds Want to Know
Are we sure that was really Rumsfeld?
Maybe he took a page from the President's boffo, critically acclaimed, MSM-blessed performance
at the Correspondents' Dinner and offered up a Rumsfeld impersonator or even a mechanical stand-in. That could explain why his batteries seemed to go dead for a moment. In fact, given how robotic Condi always seems, maybe the two of them are automatons, and so sending them to Iraq wasn't much of a risk.
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Plenty of media on Kennedy accident but nothing on Rummy's big lie
What could be more important than catching a Kennedy in what could turn out to be substance abuse? Wow! That story deserves to have legs and be given as much exposure as possible! An entertaining scandal!
On the other hand, actually catching the Sec. of Defense (red-handed, as it were) in a lie about taking us to war and causing the casualties of so many young Americans, that story pales in importance, if we judge by this morning news coverage.
Last night, when CNN (I think) ran the Rumsfeld story, we watched as he denied he had ever said he knew where the WMDs were stored. Then we were immediately shown a text which quoted him at a prewar news conference saying exactly that and indicating there were places around (East and West) of Bagdad where "we" know they are stored.
"My country, right or wrong!" is not the cry of patriotism. We will do everything to make our country noble, courageous and just, if we truly love it. And we will fight relentlessly those who would do otherwise. They are the ones who sully this country's reputation.
George McClancy