Hard to believe he used to have rockstar status just a few years ago..
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Donald Rumsfeld Passes The Buck On IraqHannity & Colmes aired the third (and, I hope, final) installment of Sean Hannity’s fawning interview with Donald Rumsfeld last night, December 12, 2006. In my previous post about the first two installments, I noted that Rumsfeld seemed to be passing the buck of responsibility for the problems in Iraq when he said, “There’s only so much the military can do. The military can do the military tasks but ultimately, it will take a political solution.” It was an implication Sean Hannity never explored. In the third installment, Rumsfeld repeated and expounded on that theory so that there was no doubt about his allusion. Once again, Hannity overlooked it. With video.
Shortly into the interview, Hannity asked Rumsfeld about the letter he wrote to President Bush just before the election, saying that the current strategy in Iraq is not working.
Rumsfeld’s answer made it clear he takes no responsibility for the problems in Iraq. “The military is doing a superb job. They're doing everything that military people can do. The problems here are political. And they're going to require diplomacy, they're going to require progress on that front for the military to succeed. So we're in that unusual circumstance where there's no way our military can lose a single battle – here or around the world. There's also no way the military can win alone. We simply have to have a political process that works with the various elements in these countries to give strength and encouragement and empowerment to the mainstream Muslims who aren't extremists, who are not violent extremists, who are not going around killing people, who are not trying to destabilize the moderate Muslim regimes in this region."
Wait a minute! Is Rummy blaming other parts of the Bush administration (think State Department) for the problems in Iraq? It sure sounds that way, but Sean Hannity completely ignored that aspect. He pretended not to understand what Rumsfeld had just said. Hannity asked, “Just to be clear, there can't be a military victory, there must be, along with military action a political solution?”
“Absolutely,” Rumsfeld said. “For example, you can be very successful militarily here in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere but if you train and equip Iraqi forces or Afghan forces and they don't have a Ministry of Justice where you can process people, or they don't have a Ministry of Health where their healthcare can be taken care of or they don't have a Ministry of Finance where people can get paid. The military capabilities aren't sufficient to create an environment that's hospitable to the kinds of development and political evolution that's necessary. Our government is what it is. It is basically organized for the 20th Century not the 21st Century.”
No Ministry of Justice to process people? Was that his excuse for Abu Ghraib? Hannity never asked. It's a near certainty that the words "Abu Ghraib" will never be uttered in a FOX News interview with anyone in the Bush administration.
Rumsfeld continued, "The Department of Defense is basically the only department that excels in deliberate planning," but if Iraq or Afghanistan needs to develop its capability to do patrol its borders, "Well, you need people to help them develop the ability to guard their borders effectively. That's not what the Department of Defense does. So it is a set of issues that we need to address. We need to have capabilities to strengthen other nations so that they can better govern their own space."
What did Hannity say to that? Did he ask why the "deliberate planning" had not foreseen the insurgency or any of the other problems that have arisen? No, Hannity changed the subject. "Do you think the average American understands the nature of this threat and how vast is the threat of Islamic extremism?"
