Yeah, I know it sounds like an Onion title, but it may be true, if terrifyingly so.
Okay, BushCo dropped the Weapons of Mass Destruction as the reason we went to Iraq (no weapons of MD: nope none, nada), and the new rationale is supposed to be that we toppled the bad guy Saddam, and locked him up good and tight.
So you can gauge just how big a suckhole of PR nightmare Iraq has become for BushCo, if Rumsfeld offered to let Mr. Mustache Evil Incarnate go free, if only the bad bad bad man will just ask his minions (and everyone else who hates the Americans there) if they'll pretty please just lighten up on the blasting Iraqis and U.S. soldiers to bitty bits.
Go free -- not if Saddam agrees to make the violence stop -- but just if he asks for it to stop, if a seemingly unlikely offer.
I don't know about you, but that seems to me a betrayal of the troops who were told they fought to free Iraq from Saddam.
But never mind, that is exactly what Rumsfeld is alleged to have done, and Saddam is alleged to have turned him down cold.
However -- and here's the grain of salt -- the report originated with the Arab press (which often seem to emulate the journalistic ethics of FOX news), but the international press is reporting it, just the same.
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010553.html
And stranger things have turned out to be true in the Bushco Bizzaro world.