BCT Editorial – 12/22/06

This page was last updated on December 23, 2006.

The finest?; Editorial; Beaver County Times; December 22, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The truthiness of the Bush administration was never more apparent than when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left office.

“For those who haven’t herd [sic] about the most insightful word to enter the political lexicon in deccades [sic], comedian Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s ‘Colbert Report’ defines truthiness as ‘the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.’”

[RWC] “Herd” and “deccades?” Is anyone proofreading editorials?

Since October 2004, this is at least the sixth time a Times editorial has referenced either “The Daily Show” or its spin-off, “The Colbert Report,” and provides the third reference in less than two months. It never ceases to amaze me the Times gives two political comedy shows such credibility.

I would say it takes guts for the Times to accuse anyone of “truthiness,” but I’m not sure editorial authors realize they do on a regular basis what they accuse others of doing. For example, liberals probably really believe they’re “centrists.”

“How else to explain Vice President Dick Cheney’s reality-denying comment at Rumsfeld’s retirement? ‘I believe the record speaks for itself,’ Cheney said. ‘Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had.’

“Let’s see. Rumsfeld scorned and ridiculed those who tried to warn him about the inadequacy of his plans for the occupation of Iraq. He’s the leader who refused to take responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. He’s the person who dismissed a question about troops in the field not having the proper equipment to protect them as going to war ‘with the army you have.’”

[RWC] Regarding the “Rumsfeld scorned and ridiculed …” comment, I addressed that assertion in my critique of “Fitting farewell.”

Regarding “responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison,” what the editorial really meant was Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t resign. The implication is there was a policy supporting prisoner abuse and Mr. Rumsfeld was responsible. If such a policy existed, why were the Pentagon investigations into the abuses well underway long before the story was “broken” by the press? Indeed, the press learned about the investigation from a regular military press conference. There’s a little more about this in my critique of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial “Trail of abuse.”

Regarding the assertion Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the question about armor, I’ll be kind and call it only a misrepresentation. Here’s the full question and answer according to the Pentagon’s transcript of the “town hall meeting” in Kuwait on December 8, 2004.

“Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us? [Applause]

“SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me?

“Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

“SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.

“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

“I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on.

“And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?

“GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to. That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.

“SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.

Come on, guys. If you’re going to make misleading assertions, at least make it difficult for them to be shot down.

“Maybe it’s time to come up with another definition of ‘finest.’”

[RWC] Why not? After all, Times editorials refer to senators as “centrists” when they have liberal ratings of 95% from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.