Dustup at Defense

The media is making hay out of the fact that a couple of protestors acted up at a speech held by Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. They're latching onto the fact that a former CIA analyst was among those involved:

"Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?" asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst, during a question-and-answer session.

"I did not lie," shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.

Let's see - McGovern makes the claim that Rumsfeld lied, and Rumsfeld says he didn't. Yeah, that'a big deal.

Yawn.

Perhaps Rumsfeld should have replied that had the CIA been doing its job during the 1990s, they would have had a much better idea of what al Qaeda was doing, where it was operating, and had a better idea of the nature of the threat posed by Iraq, Iran, and other rogue states. In each of those instances, the CIA has been exposed as not getting the job done. However, when operating with less than perfect intel, one has to do what one thinks is the prudent and reasonable steps to protect the country against threats - threats that happen to include a rogue state like Iraq under Saddam Hussein who openly flouted a decade of UN resolutions and the 1991 cease fire agreement (not to mention ongoing human rights violations throughout that entire period).