From two nights ago, an interview by Jim Lehrer of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

full interview text, and online video version of it HERE
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/july-dec05/rumsfeld_12-08.html

Some excerpts:



    DONALD RUMSFELD: [ criticising one-sided media coverage: ]
    I say tell the whole story.
    Why not some context?
    And I'm not in your business. I don't walk in your shoes. I don't know how tough it is. It has to be tough, but all I know is that there are 150,000 troops over there who keep asking me, what in the world is going on; why is the impression in the United States so notably different than the facts on the ground that they see every single day?
    JIM LEHRER: Well, as you know --
    DONALD RUMSFELD: It's not my impression; it's theirs.




    JIM LEHRER: Put the press aside for a moment. Some people would say to you, Mr. Secretary, the problem or the reason public opinion has sunk so low is the expectations that the American people had for this war have not been met.
    Quite the contrary, they didn't expect 2,100 Americans to die. They didn't expect 16,000 to be wounded and they sure didn't expect 1,900 of the 2,100 to die after major combat was ended.
    So is that part of the problem as well?
    DONALD RUMSFELD: Could be.
    JIM LEHRER: You don't think --
    DONALD RUMSFELD: It could be, it could be. I mean, I was very careful. I never predicted any number of deaths or the cost or the length because I've looked at a lot of wars, and anyone who tries to do that is going to find themselves wrong, flat wrong.
    I will give you an interesting statistic.
    The number of people who have been killed in action in Iraq is 1,664.
    It's a lot.
    The number of people who have died over there [of other causes ] are another 446.
    The number of people who have been wounded are 16,000.
    Of those, 8,500 went back in to their posts, back to duty within 48 or 72 hours.
    Now that's just a little refinement on what you said. But it's not nothing -- it is a nontrivial difference between [ the statistical facts and ] how you characterized it.

  • from Do Racists have lower IQ's...

    Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.

    EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.