Donald Rumsfeld tells the Council on Foreign Relations — the striped-pants elite, and not the province of fools — that “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links” al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein. Then he gets back to the office, gets beat up, and says he was “misunderstood”.
What possessed Rumsfeld to tell the truth without thought of the Rovian consequences? Having done it, how was he whipped [in the political sense] into taking it back?
Or, perhaps, is this whole line of speculation mistaken? Perhaps Rumsfeld has some more basic and widespread psychological problem coping with, or denial of, reality?
Or, maybe Bushness is catching? If your Leader carries his own reality distortion field, there must be a powerful groupthink pressure to deny reality too. And there sure seems to be a lot of reality denial in this crew. Consider just this week's examples, the cases of Paul Bremer and of course Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
But the emperor really doesn't have any clothes….
I was leaning towards senility and a hopeless failure to check old notes…but those are good possibilities, too.
On O’Reilly tonight (I’m a glutton for punishment) I heard Dick Morris say, “With friends like these, who needs enemies.” He was talking about Rumsfeld and Bremer. These guys will throw you from the troika faster than you can say, “I was misquoted out of context off the record”.