Rumsfeld retreats, disclaims earlier rhetoric:

“In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld – with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war – is denying that he ever made such assertions.”

This man is either so outrageously arrogant that he believes he can rewrite history at will or his memory so impaired that he has no choice but to live in a fantasy world of his own confabulation. In either case, it is hard to see how he would be seen as anything but an intolerable liability by the Bush White House. It must be considered too great a hit to Bush’s credibility to oust him with even the kindest spin before the election, too easy to impute that it would be an admission of sin (although, surely, the Bush administration does not care to, or is too inept to, operate by any semblance of the old adage about avoiding even the appearance of impropriety!). A conspiracy theorist might wonder if Rumsfeld will be eliminated by an ‘accident’ before he does too much more damage, and revered and mourned as a hero in the WoT®, instead. After all, as Josh Marshall said,

It’s become conventional wisdom that the Pentagon, or rather the civilians at the Pentagon, muscled out the State Department on key issues of planning for Iraq. My recent reporting tells me it’s much more a matter of Cheney and the Office of the Vice President. Much more.