Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
Statement 1 specifically calls out nuclear threats. Statement 2 references threats in general. Also, he's making the case for war, so there is some selling going on.
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This leaves two possibilities --
1. He thought Iraq was an immediate threat, making statements consistent with that belief that he now is trying to take back.
2. He did not think Iraq was an immediate threat and he parsed words extra super carefully when he was interviewed so that later he could deny ever having said "Iraq is an immediate threat."
I doubt that any of the people arguing with you here think that possibility 2 is correct. I certainly don't ascribe evil motives to him or efforts to deceive the American public into war. I think that the break-down between your (and bilmore's) position on this and what generally others are saying is that it seems pretty clear to most of us from a first-time watching of the Meet the Press video that Rumsfeld got caught up by his own quotes. You guys want to say that hypothetically he could have said these things and have it not equal the very thing he was denying, but if you take a step back and pretend for a moment that instead of Rumsfeld it was a democrat on Meet the Press who said and did exactly what he said and did, you would have the impression that the rest of us currently have.
Why not just stand up and say - "Yes, when we went to war we thought that the threat was more immediate than it has proven to be. We still think it was a good decision because we got that bastard dictator out."
We didn't start the parsing words battle tonight. Club did. I think we all basically thought that the MtP segment spoke for itself. You guys showed that people could defend the position that it [MtP] didn't.
