Rumsfeld ready for "take-off"

In an Associated Press story by somebody named, "Robert Burns, Military Writer," covering a Pentagon press conference by Donald Rumsfeld today, Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged some wrongdoing in the US's treatment of prisoners in secret detention centers.

However, he bruskly turned aside criticism by Amnesty International, decrying the group's attacks on US human rights violations of detainees.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. military has done more than any other force to liberate oppressed people and has gone to great lengths to ensure that detainees are free to practice their religion.

"Indeed, that's why the recent allegation that the U.S. military is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay is so reprehensible," he said.

William F. Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International, wisely made a rapid response comment to Rumsfeld, saying that Rumsfeld and other officials "continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial."

Next, Rumsfeld continued to insist that the ends justify the means by reminding everybody that anyone helping Abu Zarqawi would be held accountable ... implying that we were going to hear that someone [Iran] is helping him, so we have to retaliate [bomb]. Stay tuned.

At this point he trotted out General Myers who said we don't know anything about Zarqawi, but we think he has been wounded.

The need to remind everybody that we are fighting a so-called "War on Terror" may be the only thing keeping Zarqawi alive at this point, if there really is such a person anyway. If we can't keep the evidence of our victimhood in the public mind, then we are in stark culpable view as the violators of human rights, the Geneva conventions and the laws of the United States.

After that, Rumsfeld went on to underscore that we are good, even though we may do a few bad things. After all, Rumsfeld accused the news media of focusing too much on prisoner abuse allegations and too little on "U.S. policy guidance to treat detainees humanely."

The Bush administration seeks to cover up and excuse all their misdeeds behind broad generalizations of "freedom" and "humane policies."

Unless Rumsfeld gets on a plane and flies far away really fast, he'd better duck, because somebody's bound to throw a pie in his face!