Fellow contributor Shaun Mullen discusses the recent and lengthy four-part New York Times op-ed series by Errol Morris, an op-ed that focuses on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “lack of ability to discriminate between truth and fantasy,” on his “gobbledygook philosophy that — seemingly paying lip service to empiricism — devalued evidence and made a mockery of logic.” You know, all those Rumsfeld semantics games, his goodness gracious “the known known, the known unknown and the unknown unknown” BS. Syllogisms, riddles and mental gymnastics that may have been amusing at the time were it not for the tragedy that thousands of our troops had already been killed or maimed because of his inability to discriminate facts from personal certitude and hubris.
Morris attributes some of Rumsfeld’s grand untruths and fantasies to “the power of dogma versus evidence,” and compares it to the days of the Inquisition, when no amount of evidence could convince the Inquisitors otherwise — zealots who “had an unshakable belief in something…”
While Mullen highlights the conclusion of Morris’ op-ed, it is Morris’ opening paragraph that stuck in my mind:
When I first met Donald Rumsfeld in his offices in Washington, D.C., one of the things I said to him was that if we could provide an answer to the American public about why we went to war in Iraq, we would be rendering an important service. He agreed. Unfortunately, after having spent 33 hours over the course of a year interviewing Mr. Rumsfeld, I fear I know less about the origins of the Iraq war than when I started. A question presents itself: How could that be? How could I know less rather than more? Was he hiding something? Or was there really little more than met the eye?
Well-said and good questions — questions that are not answered, or are not answerable.
However, while it took Morris 33 hours of interviews with Donald Rumsfeld and, I am sure, an untold number of research and writing hours, to figure out this man, I figured Rumsfeld out several years ago.
To be exact, I determined the essence — the character – of the then secretary of defense on December 8, 2004, when he held a town hall meeting at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.
At that time, the Iraq War was raging and our troops were being killed by the dozen every week in insurgent attacks.
Looking an Army soldier who was pleading for better protection against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) straight in the eye, Rumsfeld coldly, clinically and callously replied, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
That same week, Dec. 4 through Dec 10, 17 of our troops were killed in Iraq – six of them by improvised explosive devices.
On that day, whatever unknowns there may still have been about Donald Rumsfeld, he became amply known to me.
And now, please read and watch “Donald Rumsfeld’s Lie About Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda, and 9/11.”
