and blames the media, of course.
Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech today, in which he complained that the media are focusing too much on what's going wrong.
"To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks," Rumsfeld said in remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He added, "It's appropriate to note not only how many Americans have been killed -- and may God bless them and their families -- but what they died for or, more accurately, what they lived for."
Wait a minute... isn't this the War on Terror? If success is not defined by "the absense of terrorist attacks", then what are we doing? How will we suceed?
It's interesting that these days, Rumsfeld & the gang are trying to separate Iraq from the broader war. It comes up in most of their speeches. I think they're preparing to deal with the reality that they need to get out of Iraq, and trying to save face, so they're trying to build the argument that we've "succeeded" in Iraq (by toppling Saddam, and having elections, for example did you see all the people with their purple fingers? See, we've succeeded.).
Nevermind that their only surviving rationale for the USA being in Iraq in the first place, is that this was part of a necessary overall strategy in the War on Terror.
In a change of focus, Rumsfeld also aimed some of his remarks at the media for presenting a "jarring contrast between what the American people are reading and hearing about Iraq and the views of the Iraqi people."
The Iraqis, he said, are more upbeat about their country, their security forces are growing, and they are on the road to democracy.
I would love to see his evidence for this. It's interesting that he seems unaware of the recent polls that, in striking contrast to his statement, indicate that "fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country" and 82% are strongly opposed to our presence.
Rumsfeld also questioned stories about a military propaganda program that secretly paid Iraqi newspapers and journalists to publish favorable articles about the war and rebuilding in Iraq. He said he didn't know if the allegations were true, and questioned whether a contractor properly implemented military policy, which was supposed to require the articles to be labeled as ads or opinion pieces.
U.S. military leaders in Iraq confirmed the existence of the propaganda program last week.
Yeah, he seems pretty far out of the loop on this one too. Does it seem contradictory at all to him, that the U.S. military in Iraq has already admitted to this? Does he think that they somehow mistakenly admitted to it, before having the facts? it truly boggles the mind.
I don't think Rumsfeld's blame-the-media strategy is going to get very far, as this quote (also in the AP article) explains:
"It's a classic case of blaming the messenger," said Steve Rendall, a senior analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog group in New York. "When the news is bad, blame the journalists for ignoring the good news. Rumsfeld is confusing bias with bad news. Reporting bad news is not bias."
You can only get people to stop believing their own eyes for so long. Eventually, the pictures are just too strong as evidence to ignore.