Rumsfeld’s an asshole
Published by marco on
I just saw a piece of his daily press conference on CNN and, at first, he’s funny. He’s not funny in the way he thinks he’s funny, but funny in that he talks exactly like the people who make fun of him make him sound. The February 2nd, 2004 Doonesbury (pictured left) put the question of weapons of mass destruction into the Rumsfeld grinder and got:
“Do I wish Reagan hadn’t sent me to coddle a dictator we knew was using chemical weapons on a near-daily basis? Gracious sakes, no! That was then! Now is now! … In a perfect world, do I wish that now was then, when he actually had chemical weapons to find? You bet your britches! Should anyone care that when he had them, I didn’t oppose them, but now that he doesn’t, I do?”
After having seen him perform live, I have to admit that I could not tell you with absolute certainty that that is not a quote from him. The man quite literally speaks without ending a sentence. Whenever you feel him about to get to the point, along comes a comma or an opening parenthesis and away he goes on another tangent, until he’s so far from the original question, he’s not only no longer in any danger of actually answering it, the person who posed it most likely can’t even remember what it was.
This comic, #33 (MNFTIU), also comes up with an eerily accurate Rumsfeld impression answering the question of whether the US will actually hand over power on June 30th:
“Do I think it will happen? It has a chance of happening, yes. Will it happen for sure? Who knows? I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
That’s just dead-on. In fact, the interview I saw today dodged exactly that question, except he wouldn’t even commit to basic math in this one. Troops that should have long since gone home have had their furloughs extended another 90 days, but power should be handed over within 60 days. Reconcile these numbers for us, Mr. Rumsfeld.
Well, after about 2 minutes, I was gut-laughing, but another minute later, he wasn’t funny anymore. It’s one thing to answer every question with a question and sentences longer than anything James Joyce ever contemplated. It’s quite another to act like everybody else in the room is an idiot when they demand you really answer the question.
As the MNFTIU comic so eloquently puts it:
“Donald Rumsfeld is a volunteer, right? We don’t actually pay him a salary, do we?”