Next Question?
You had to admit that Secretary Rumsfeld can take the heat.*
Asked whether he saw any validity in the criticisms of his critics, who have said he has been dismissive and contemptuous of advice, and said that he committed strategic failures in connection with the Iraq war, Mr. Rumsfeld said he would prefer to "let a little time walk over it."
"I would like to reflect on them a bit," he said.
In other words, "Next question?" This isn't a story of how blindly incompetent Mr Rumsfeld is. It's a story about how conditioned the press corps has become to the Bush Administration's bland stonewalling. It's as though Karl Rove had advised senior personnel that American brains now rely exclusively on Google searches, so that their attention can be diverted by bold evasion and non-sequitur.
* Christine Hauser in The New York Times, 18 April 2006.
