On Evidence And The Local Liar

I just love Secretary Rumsfeld's briefings. Here are a couple of excerpts from today's Q&A session:

Q: Mr. Secretary, on Iraq, as you very well know, United -- Powell's going to be going before the United Nations tomorrow. The inspectors have found a 17th empty chemical warhead. I was wondering what your thoughts again are if he can present anything more than just circumstantial evidence, and again to elaborate what you've said before, that circumstantial evidence can be powerful.

Rumsfeld: Again, I mean, you all are -- have been watching L.A. Law or something too much. (Laughter.) I mean, circumstantial evidence --

Q: (Off mike) -- 10 years ago.

Rumsfeld: Is that -- 10 years ago?

Q: (Off mike) -- 10 years ago.

Rumsfeld: That's the last time I saw a TV program. (Laughter.)

Q: (Off mike) - It's in reruns.

Rumsfeld: Is it?

Q: Yeah.

Rumsfeld: All right. I apologize here.

(Off mike joking, laughter.)

Rumsfeld: I've been busy. I've been busy here. (Laughter.)

Myers: That's what I would say on that.

Rumsfeld: First of all, it would be inaccurate for people to take your question and think that it was correct. But it is not correct. The idea that all there has been is circumstantial evidence is false. I don't know what the technical definition of "evidence" is, but -- legally, but I do know that a good number of the things that have been released by the United Kingdom and by the United States already, let alone what the -- will be presented by Secretary Powell tomorrow morning, are evidence.

Now, someone could say, well, it's powerful, or it's less powerful, or it's weak, or it's strong. But it's evidence. And we -- I got a -- had a discussion with Senator Specter recently about that, who was a -- I guess a defense attorney and a prosecutor. And he described that process.

But we're not in a court of law, and I think that it's a misunderstanding. What's being tested, as I said, is whether or not Iraq is going to cooperate and provide the United Nations with its weapons of mass destruction and permit them to be destroyed. That is what the resolution is about. That is what the 16 resolutions are about. And this fixation that people have on the kinds of -- this smoking gun business, I think, is a misunderstanding of what we're doing and what's going on in this world and what the nature of the threat is and what the danger is.

And this is perhaps my favorite Rumsfeldism, that of the local liar:

Q: Mr. Secretary, today in a broadcast interview, Saddam Hussein said, "There is only one truth: Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever." And he went on to say, "I would like to tell you directly we have no relationship with al Qaeda."

Rumsfeld: And Abraham Lincoln was short.

Q: Would you care to respond directly to what Saddam Hussein has said today?

(Pause.)

Rumsfeld: How does one respond to that? I mean, he said that Secretary Powell's words tomorrow are going to be lies. He says that the photographs that will be shown will be doctored. That's what he does. That's what he does. And then the world's press spreads it around the world as though it's true. It's utter -- it's just a continuous pattern. This is a case of the local liar coming up again and people repeating what he said and forgetting to say that he never -- almost never -- rarely tells the truth.

And finally, the new name for UN Weapons Inspectors (if some media folks and the French had their way):

Q: But he also challenged anyone who has any evidence to bring it forward. It was almost a response to what Secretary Powell said yesterday when he acknowledged the U.S. has no smoking gun.

Rumsfeld: If I were -- well, I guess there's no way to recast this whole issue, but the fixation on a smoking gun is fascinating to me. Go back to September 11th and think of trying to piece together facts and information in a way that you could stop that from happening and stop those 3,000 people from being killed and stop those airplanes from crashing into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and Pennsylvania. There's no smoking gun in there! You get the smoking gun after the planes have crashed. It is a -- the people who keep repeating that are Saddam Hussein and his crowd and people who are chasing the wrong rabbit.

It is unfortunate that the test seems to be that -- for a lot of people -- when in fact, the test in the U.N. resolution, if people would read it, is whether or not Saddam Hussein is going to cooperate. And we know he's not. What has he done? He has filed a fraudulent, false declaration, that anyone who looks at it and reads it says is incomplete and inaccurate. He has refused to allow these inspectors free reign in that country. They often have more Iraqi intelligence minders encircling the inspectors than there are inspectors, by a factor of some non-trivial number. When they arrive someplace, they often are welcomed and expected. The people who the resolution requires be allowed to leave the country are not even allowed to be interviewed alone to see if they would like to leave the country. It is a -- there is a pattern that is clear of a lack of cooperation.

And if the test is a smoking gun, then the implication is that the test is not cooperation, the test is that these inspectors, these relatively handfuls of inspectors are supposed to go in there and find something he doesn't want them to find. How in the world can they do that? That is never what was intended, or they would have been called discoverers and finders, not inspectors. The only role they had was to go in and inspect what he offered up.

Discoverers and Finders. Priceless.

His public performances are just wonderful, but what he's doing behind the scenes to recast the DoD is much much more important. We are lucky he is serving this country, and we are fortunate that the President picked him.

[Posted at 19:42 CST on 02/04/03] [Link]