Tank Debacle: Rummy Expresses Disbelief That Law Applies To Him

1914-18 Tank Corps Poster by Austin William Huta

In today's WaPo, (title bar) a year after it happened--takes that long for the government to get around to complying with federal Freedom of Information Act requests, although, Demon Princess confesses to being shocked that they even bother complying with them at all these days.

And Rummy apparently feels the same way about American law, any American law in general, even requests that he take an oath to testify truthfully, which he apparently disregarded anyway.

See here: "The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

"Rumsfeld agreed but complained. 'I find it strange,' he said to the investigators, on the grounds that as a government official 'the laws apply to me' anyway." Oops.

Scoff-law arrogance, apparently, is highly contagious among the Republicons who adhere to the theory "l'etat, c'est moi," & don't even bother anymore to disguise it.

Ahem. Onto the meat of the story.

"It was a bumpy start to an odd interview, as Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with 'the wars' in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed.

"Then-Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz, who resigned last year to take a job with a defense contractor, told senators at a June 2005 hearing that the transcript of Rumsfeld's interview was deleted from his 256-page report on the tanker lease scandal because Rumsfeld had not said anything relevant.

"But a copy of the transcript, obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying-- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The issue is relevant because a series of reports, including others by the inspector general and by the Government Accountability Office, indicate that five years into the Bush administration, the department's system of buying new weapons is broken and dysfunctional."

I'll leave interested readers here to peruse the rest of the article for themselves, but not before I deliver a big shout-out to the WaPo for tenaciously hanging in there & refusing to be put off by the obstacles thrown in their path. We need an alert & informed media to cut through the bullshit, tell us what's really going on & keep on government ass.

Yes, the courage to be tenacious is a good thing.