Abracadabrah

I create as I speak

Rumsfeld Love

Saying before the cameras what so many people think:

Gateway Pundit has the goods on a Rumsfeld-CNN reporter exchange:

Reporter: "Do you feel embattled at this point in your tenure? In a recent column, Maureen Dowd quoted an unidentified administration official who described you as an "eccentric old uncle who's ignored." She claims that you don't hold the same sway in meetings."

Rumsfeld: "Did you get all that? You want to be on camera, right? That’s a sure way to get on the evening news. The answer to your question is no."

Reporter: "Well, I'm asking about the facts reported in the column. Do you feel you hold the same sway in meetings?"

Rumsfeld: "I'm not going to comment on that."

(Pause)- Rumsfeld looks away for a moment, then...

Rumsfeld: "If you believe everything you read in Maureen Dowd, you better get a life."
...
And, then there was Rumsfeld to Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon reporter:

"I'm rather old fashioned, I like to engage my brain before
my mouth."

Gateway Pundit: Rumsfeld: "If you believe Maureen Dowd, you better get a life!"

The video is at Expose The Left.

The amazing thing is that ostensibly the reporter actually does believe what he reads in a Maureen Dowd article, else why would he have quoted it. When appearing to believe it makes him seem like a naive, credulous and suckered fool.

[UPDATE] Jay Nordlinger adds:

This reminded me of an interview I had with him ... in November 2003. I wrote all this up, for NR, in a piece called "Air Rummy: A conversation with the secretary of defense — and the missus."

Here is an excerpt:

I ask [Rumsfeld whether he reads] Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist who regularly makes sport of him. He allows that he reads the headline and the first paragraph or two. Then, having gotten the drift, he quits. "Do you know her?" he asks me. "No," I say, "but you've been good for her career." He responds: "I'm not so sure about that - that this has been good for her career." A highly interesting point, which there is too little time to pursue.

I think that point still holds. She may be a superstar on the far left, but she seems absolutely without any intellectual heft on the right.

posted by Alcibiades @ 12:49 PM