The dreaded "Republican Amnesia" has tragically infected many Bush administration officials. This plague has spread from Cheney, Scooter and other WH officials to the Pentagon. It has now claimed yet another victim. It would seem from his press conference today (
http://www.defenselink.mil/...)
Donald Rumsfeld is suffering from the same dreaded disease.
Q Mr. Secretary, recently Larry Wilkerson, the former State Department official, has described what he said was a cabal between you and Vice President Cheney in forming public policy leading up to the war. And he described what he said was a seriously dysfunctional foreign policy. I don't think we've heard you speak on that. Can you just respond to that?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven't read this. I've heard about it. And I don't know the man. I've never met the man, and I don't believe he's ever been in a meeting of the NSC. So it's hard for me to understand exactly what his insights might have been.
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Truly amazing that in four years, Mr. Rumsfeld never met or at was introduced to the Larry Wilkerson. One would have thought Sec. Rumsfeld would have had several occasions to cross paths with the Chief of Staff for the Secretary of State sometime during all those meetings for the War on Terror.
Obviously, he was too sick to read a newspaper or watch TV in the last week.
It gets even better.
Q If I can just follow up. He seems to be complaining that the State Department's role in that was minimized in the lead-up to the war.
SEC. RUMSFELD: My experience in those meetings is that the president is the principal person who decides these things, and if he -- what was his job, this fellow?
Q He was -- forgive me, I cover the Pentagon, but he was
the chief of staff to Powell.
Q He was chief of staff to Powell.
SEC. RUMSFELD: I don't know what his perspective was or what his expectations were.
I read DK for a year, finally got my nerve up to make an account so I could comment occasionally. After watching the events on Friday and today, this sent me over the edge to actually writing a diary.