Reply #104: DOD: AP ‘mischaracterized’ Rumsfeld’s speech in report [View All]

[lebkuchen]

This was in today's Stars and Stripes. Soldiers calls to their representatives must have spiked after Rummy's bizarro comments.

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The Defense Department took the unusual step Wednesday of posting a statement saying an Associated Press story had “seriously mischaracterized” aspects of a speech made Tuesday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The AP had written that Rumsfeld had “likened critics of the U.S. war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis” and that Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral and intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security.

The DOD asked the Associated Press for a correction.

The AP softened its story in later versions, saying that Rumsfeld “alluded to critics of the Bush administration’s war policies in terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s” and added that “ides to Rumsfeld said later he was not accusing the administration’s critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.”

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=39719