Rummy Ruffled

"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."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Face The Nation (CBS), 3/14/04

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."

-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02, quoted back to Rumsfeld by NYT reporter Thomas Friedman

"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."

-- CBS transcript of Rumsfeld's response

(Via The Progress Report. Squirmy, uncomfortable video clip here. I guess one could make a word-parsing argument that "more immediate threat" is not the same as "immediate threat." It'd be hard to make the same distinction about White House spokesman Scott McClellan's remark from February of last year: "This is about imminent threat." I mean, it--I--we--heh! Phew! Hey, look over there!)

Comments

[Ken Goldstein]

To quote Mitch in the "We'll Always Have Tuesday, aka Yoko" episode of the delightful Home Movies: "Now you start putting things all chronological like that it's just gonna look bad."

[Bill]

"sure, everything seems bad if you look at it."

-- h. simpson

[Dave L]

Squirmy? Uncomfortable?!!

I could watch that clip a hundred times!!