I caught some of the Defense Department briefing today, and boy, Rumsfeld was ready to snap. It’s not every day that you see someone at that level of government laying on the sarcasm, openly mocking the reporters looking for his response to the (actually quite real, by all accounts) chaos in Baghdad.

The Reuters account of the briefing described it this way:

In Washington on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied Iraq was falling into chaos, saying television images of isolated acts of looting and violence were being played “over and over again” for sensational effect.

“It’s untidy. And freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,” stormed Rumsfeld, his hand chopping the air for emphasis in response to reporters’ questions at a Pentagon briefing.

“It is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and over again of some boy walking out (of a building) with a vase and say ‘Oh my goodness you didn’t have a plan’ — That’s nonsense,” he told reporters.

Here’s how the BBC’s Nick Childs put it in their reporters’ weblog:

It was an extraordinary combative performance by Donald Rumsfeld at the latest Pentagon briefing. Clearly exasperated by the new criticisms of US-led forces, the American defence secretary suggested that media reports of chaos and lawlessness in Iraq were exaggerated.

He agreed that US forces did have an obligation to help provide security and said that they were doing what they could to curb the looting where they saw it.

Mr Rumsfeld said no one condoned looting, but according to him much of the lawlessness was a natural pent up response by people to the end of a repressive regime. Any such transition was inevitably untidy, he said.

I find it interesting that even when the press was piling on Rumsfeld a week or so into the invasion, when he was getting all that criticism about the inadquate war plan, he wasn’t this feisty. I guess he was confident then that subsequent events would vindicate him, which, in all honesty, they have, at least with respect to his having put sufficient forces in place to topple Saddam.

But now, he’s really sounding stressed. I don’t think he anticipated this: that having won this great victory, he would immediately get all this flak about the war’s aftermath. And honestly, I don’t think he has an answer. Which is a pretty scary notion, especially if you live in Iraq.

This entry was posted by jbc on Friday, April 11th, 2003 at 6:43 pm and is filed under the_usa, war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.