From the Dec. 8
edition of MSNBC's
Hardball:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: We are joined by Tom DeFrank — he‘s the Washington bureau chief of the
New York Daily News — and Dana Milbank of the
Washington Post. Thank you, Dana. Thank you, Tom. There are a lot of rumblings, and I think some of them are coming out of your reporting, Tom, about something wrong with this war, the way it‘s being run over there. Despite the president‘s strong stand, we‘re going to stay until we get the job done,
is Rumsfeld in trouble? DEFRANK: Well, I think he‘s in trouble, but I think he has been in trouble for well over a year, Chris. The real question is ...
MATTHEWS: With the president?
DEFRANK: Yes, I think the president — but the president, as we all know, is a very loyal guy. He — with rare exceptions he doesn‘t like to get rid of people when they are under duress. And
I think that had Rumsfeld not been under such criticism a year or so ago, if the Abu Ghraib prison riot — prison scandal had not broken, I think Rumsfeld would have been gone long ago. But I think now it appears that he is on the glide path waiting for a graceful retirement after the first of the year. ...
MATTHEWS: Dana, you are reporting at the “Post” so far about the condition of the chain of command. Is Rumsfeld in trouble?
MILBANK: Well, he should be by any normal standard, but I think as Tom correctly points out, that this president is not one to push somebody out when he is in a difficult spot, that‘s why
they are just waiting for something to make a little bit of a turn here, whereby he could be eased out. Nobody really knows. And people have been speculating about Rumsfeld for an awfully long time. His response to Tom‘s report today was to say that he has no plans to leave. But, if you recall that President Bush had no plans to attack Iraq right up until March of 2003, so he certainly is not ruling it out.
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This item first appeared at
Journalists Against Bush's B.S.