The post below is one of those shots of indictment and outrage mixed with a few literary detours. But somehow I feel the mood of the moment, the truth of the moment, is less outrage as it is surreality.
Consider this exchange between Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Laura Ingraham from a few days ago …
INGRAHAM: Are you confident that that estimate of a few days ago of being five years or perhaps even ten years away is realistic and accurate given the fact that in the past we’ve certainly underestimated nuclear capabilities?
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: No.
INGRAHAM: No which part?
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: No, I’m not confident.
INGRAHAM: Uh huh.
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: I think it’s a very difficult target for our intelligence community. They work hard at it and they’re fine people, but it’s a difficult thing to do. Our visibility into their circumstance is imperfect. I would add that if one is asked the question how long would it take them to do certain things totally, alone, on an indigenous basis without assistance from other countries you’d get one answer. If you said to them, if you said what if they were able to get ballistic missiles from North Korea, as they have, and what if they were able to acquire fissile material from somebody? How long would it take? I think you’d get a somewhat different answer.
They work hard at it and they’re fine people.
I guess you might call that The Unbearable Arrogance of an Unmatchable Failure.
This is right out of 2002, the snide and contemptuous pats on the back to the fuddy-duddies in the intelligence agencies who lack the 20/20 masculinity and ass-kicking philosophy to see what needs to be done and do it.
I guess Rumsfeld didn’t catch the last three years or notice that we’re in the springtime of an unfolding national catastrophe due in large measure to the last time he chose to talk out of his behind with, it would seem, either no idea what he was talking about or a complete indifference to the truth of what he was discussing.
Like I said, bizarre.
Is anyone taking him seriously the second time?
