More Rumsfeld howlers

Here from his op ed in Friday's New York Times "Korean freedom was won at a terrible cost — tens of thousands of lives, including more than 33,000 Americans killed in action. "

This is a completely crazy estimate of the cost in lives of the Korean war. I have seen the estimate 3 million which seemed high to me, but "tens of thousands" would have to be less than 200,000 which is an absurdly low estimate.

I think that Rumsfeld is not counting the cost in Chinese lives. Why not ? Aren't Chinese human too ?

Later he's back to more usual nonsense

"... the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so."

That is, the "simple standard" required Saddam Hussein to prove a negative.

In spite of the fact that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, disarmed, he hadn't proven the he had disarmed. That's a sharp argument. although it is not consistent with the texts of the cease fire agreement or any UN security council resolution. Still, even if Rumsfeld managed find a Times reader who thought Saddam Hussein was required to prove he had disarmed, he loses his chance to convince even that guy by writing
"Instead of disarming ... Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance."

So which will come first ? They find WMD in Iraq, hell freezes over or Rumsfeld admits that he (like Robert Waldmann) was wrong about whether there were WMD in Iraq.