“It–my view of–of the situation was that he–he had–we–we
believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that–that we believed
and we still do not know–we will know.” — Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, on CBS News’ Face the Nation, March 14, 2004
Confused? Even in context, it doesn’t get much better. That was Sec. Rumsfeld’s response in an interview when confronted with evidence that he was making statements that were blatantly untrue.
The lapdog news media have been letting Bush and his gang get away with outright lies for so long that they’ve gotten sloppy. They tell huge whoppers with a straight face, confident that they won’t get challenged, because they never do. On the rare occasion that some rogue reporter does dare to confront them with the truth, they’re totally flabbergasted and can’t recover gracefully.
The above gobbledygook came out of Rumsfeld’s mouth when questioned about the administration’s overstatement of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and subsequent failure to find anything. The Bush gang now has the utter chutzpah to tell us that they never made all those statements which are turning out to be false. You might think that the American public’s memory and intelligence is too good for that. But, in most cases, you’d be wrong. They pull this kind of crap all the time, and it usually works. They’ve gotten away with so much for so long that they think they can get away with anything. And they usually do. But in this instance, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times read Rumsfeld’s own previous statements back to him, proving him a liar, and causing that lapse into gibberish
Late note ..MoveOn has posted a video clip of Rumsfeld’s lying performance. Unfortunately, they fade out just as he gets into the amusing babble.