Outside the Beltway

STUPID HUMAN TRICKS

James Joyner · Monday, September 8, 2003 · 3 comments

Kevin Drum has examples of a couple of very stupid things people have said on TV lately.

Don Rumsfeld

[S]uggested that those who have been critical of the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

While this is demonstrably true–obviously, having prominent officials oppose Administration policy makes it more likely that the policy will be changed than if there were unanimity–it was a silly thing to say, since one could infer that critics should therefore shut up or that they are somehow enemies of the state. Surely, Rumsfeld doesn’t actually think either of these things.

A CNN reporter, complete with pre-prepared graphics, noted that the $87 billion President Bush requested for Iraq dwarfed the $8 billion annual expenditure on Social Security and Medicare. Trouble is, those programs actually cost $700 billion. Kevin wonders, ‘[W]as this deliberately dishonest, or merely incompetent?” I vote for the latter; there’s certainly a lot of it going around.