She Said, He Said

A week ago, Condi Rice said we had made thousands of tactical errors in the Iraq War but it was the larger aims that mattered. Sort of the international diplomacy way of saying, "Sorry about blowing up the house, but aren't you happy I got rid of all the snails?"

A couple of days ago, Donald Rumsfeld said of Rice, "I don't know what she was talking about." Sort of the exact way of saying, "Sheesh, women, What do they know?"

The military hasn't made any mistakes in the war, according to Rummy, it has just been adapting to the enemy. Those crafty Iraqis. When Rummy ignored Army chief of staff, Eric K. Shinseki, when he said the occupation of Iraq would take several hundred thousand soldiers, why that wasn't a mistake. When the military failed to stop looters in the weeks after the fall of Baghdad ("It's untidy, and freedom's untidy"), that was just part of the plan to train Iraqis to fend for themselves. The fact that IEDs so easily blow apart Hummers was just an adaptable enemy realizing that Army Humvees are crackerboxes. No mistakes there. Why, Abu Ghreib was .... sorry, drawing a blank.

I often wish I could live in that wonderful fantasy world that is Donald Rumsfeld's secret garden.