RUMSFELD DISHONESTY CAUGHT ON FILM: The most vivid display of the Administration's widening credibility gap came when CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Rumsfeld "If Iraq did not have WMD, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?" Rumsfeld retorted, "You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't...It's become kind of folklore that that's what happened."
Schieffer repeated his question but Rumsfeld challenged the reporter saying, "If you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em." At that point, NYT columnist Tom Friedman read Rumsfeld his own words, pointing out that the Defense Secretary had told Congress on 9/19/02 that "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people" than Iraq and that "some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent [but] I would not be so certain."
According to the transcript of the show, Rumsfeld replied "Mm-hmm. 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."
American Progress has posted a video clip of this exchange.
That video is so great. Check it out... What an asshole.
What's so very interesting about this is that not only that the internet is making sure that this sort of item isn't lost after Sunday Morning television is done, but that there is now an infrastructure in place to publicize these sorts of deceptions to the widest possible audience.
The other interesting thing is that the graphic above is directly linked from the Whitehouse.com website. LOL. It fits *so* well, doesn't it?
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