In his latest news conference, Rumsfeld again tackled the Abu Ghraib question with his trademark self-Socratic method. I don't know where this technique of grilling yourself started, but it's becoming very annoying.
Maybe even the softballs the press threw him were too much to handle, it makes a lot easier if you ask your own questions.
More likely it's an artifact of the corporate world, because it gives the impression the speaker is really working hard. (Do I have to do everything? Apparently.)
But to cut to the latest offense: (he actually said this about the rape, torture, and murder that went on at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities):
"Is it as bad as cutting someone's head off on television? Of course not!"
Why, one might ask, is the question phrased this way? The implication is that what we did at Abu Ghraib was in some way a response to what was done to Mr. Berg, and a more restrained and civilized one at that.
But all of these offenses were visited upon innocent people!
The Berg killers were Moslem, and our victims were Moslem, so in Rumsfeld's world, they deserved whatever they got. Unfortunately we didn't get to torture Berg's murderers, since we haven't caught them yet. What this is, is just blatant racism. Can't catch one raghead, catch another.
Imagine a more exact phrasing of his question:
"Is it as bad as what Hitler did to the Jews? Absolutely not!"
Or even; "Is it as bad as what the Israelis do to the Palestinians? Probably not."
Here we have moral equivalency, and it doesn't sound nearly as good, does it?
By the way, he got this little bit of rhetorical deceit from Rush Limbaugh. But you have to ask, why are we reduced to comparing our actions to those of the world's worst terrorist, Ayman Al-Zarqawi?
Have we sunk that low? Apparently.