What does Donald Rumsfeld think about the insurgency in Iraq? Depends on what he’s trying to spin.
Touting Sunday’s election, Rumsfeld offered a dramatically grim description of the dangers faced by Iraqis. “There were constant threats of death to people who worked in the election polling booths,” Rumsfeld said, “threats of death to the security forces; threats of death to people who voted; graffiti that said “You vote, you die.” Truly frightening stuff.
That same day, Rumsfeld was asked about the future “security situation on the ground in Iraq.” Presumably feeling under the gun, Rumsfeld waded into a world of spin and made the “constant threat of death” sound like an everyday occurance:
“Well, if you have a country of 25 million people and you have X thousands of criminals, terrorists, Ba’athists, former regime elements who want to blow up things and make bombs and kill people, they can still do that. That happens in most major cities in the world, most countries in the world, that people get killed and there’s violence.“