1115.org

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I liked Kucinich’s question to Rumsfeld yesterday at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Pat Tillman hearing:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, demanded to know whether there was a White House and Defense Department strategy to manage press portrayals of the war and other events.

“Well, if there was, it wasn’t very good,” Rumsfeld remarked.

“Well, you know, maybe it was very good,” Kucinich objected loudly. “Because you actually covered up the Tillman case for a while, you covered up the Jessica Lynch case, you covered up Abu Ghraib, so something was working for you. Was there a strategy to do it, Mr. Rumsfeld?”

Unfortunately, Kucinich doesn’t seem to have planned a proper follow-up after Rumsfeld’s response. That’s unpardonable, really. Because he had to anticipate that Rumsfeld would come back with his standard arrogant, cocky, dismissive garbage (which is exactly what he did, of course). There wasn’t much point asking that question, unless he planned to follow-up with a killer counter to Rumsfeld’s response.

Rumsfeld went:

Congressman, the implication that ‘you covered up’ - that’s just false, you have nothing to base that on, you have not a scrap of evidence or a piece of paper or a witness that would attest to that … I have not been involved in any cover-up whatsoever.’

And here’s what I would have loved to hear Kucinich say, in response:

Mr. Rumsfeld, I’ll tell you what I have. I have some intelligence, and I have some common sense.

Mr. Rumsfeld, there are only two possibilities here: that you’re hopelessly incompetent, or that you covered up then and you’re lying now. I think there are far too many people in this room right now who don’t believe for a moment that you’re incompetent. I think there are far too many people in America who don’t think you’re incompetent at all.

The American people have a lot of questions, Mr. Rumsfeld, about things that happened on your watch. And the American people deserve some answers.

Just because you come in here, and you say self-serving things strongly and forcefully and angrily, that doesn’t make them true. And the American people deserve the truth from you Mr. Rumsfeld. You took their money, for years and years and years. You owe them the truth.

Talk is cheap. Would you, Mr. Rumsfeld, be willing to submit to a lie detector test on the subject of Pat Tillman’s death?

Maybe that’s not quite the double bind I think it is. But I would still like to see Rumsfeld responding to it. Make him work a little, at least.

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I would also very much like to know whether Rumsfeld has been talking to Buttercheeks.

You see, there is the amazing coincidence of how Rumsfeld remembers absolutely zilch. As AP put it:

During four hours of questioning by a House committee, Rumsfeld and former generals expressed regret at the Pentagon’s five-week delay in telling the truth about how Tillman died.
[…]
Yet none of the witnesses, among the very highest-ranking military officers at the time, said they could or should have done anything differently to prevent the mistakes that kept the truth from Tillman’s family and the public.

Several of the officials could barely recall how they themselves came to learn the circumstances of Tillman’s death, which attracted worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I don’t recall when I was told and I don’t recall who told me,” said Rumsfeld…

These, of course, are the guys who were running our wars — Afghanistan and/or Iraq. No wonder things got so thoroughly buggered up.

But let’s not get distracted here from the main theme. Pat Tillman died. Pat Tillman’s death was falsified and trumpeted as a heroic story of valorous action. All of that “attracted worldwide attention”. Then these leaders of the U.S. military learned the truth about Pat Tillman’s death.

And now every one of these motherfuckers is prepared to look the American public in the face, is prepared to make eye contact with Pat Tillman’s mom, and say they cannot bloody remember how and when they heard the truth about Pat Tillman’s death?

The whole bloody lot should be court-martialed. Except for Rumsfeld, who should be waterboarded till he’s ready to confess to absolutely anything. For instance, how he personally masterminded the 9/11 attacks.