Like President Bush in a news conference earlier this week, Rumsfeld stopped far short of bowing to charges from critics that Washington had simply not anticipated the lawlessness and opposition that a U.S.-led coalition is now be battling in Iraq.
"I would rather answer it my way," a grim-faced Rumsfeld retorted at one point after being pressed repeatedly on the issue.
"What I said, I thought, reasonably clearly was that if, a year ago, you had asked me to describe where you would be on April 15, 2004, in Iraq ... I would not have described it precisely the way we are now," he added.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040415... Oookay, let's check what he said on April 13, 2003 on Face The Nation:
And we do find that everywhere we do, when our terrific young men and
women in uniform go into a town and create that presence, the security and see that there isn't anarchy, there's not disorder and that people can safely go out into the street, people are coming in and volunteering. They're volunteering to engage in joint patrols with our people, the clerics are calling for people to not loot, not riot, the humanitarian assistance flows in and the beginning of a return to a more normal situation is occurring and it's a good thing. And they're doing that in the south and they're doing it now in the north.
http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/2003/april/041402.htm... Mr. Rumsfeld is quite right. When asked to describe the situation a year ago he did not describe it quite like the cluster f**k it turned into a year later.
Gimme a moment to try to act surprised.