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Mon 10 May, 2004 07:41 am
By MAUREEN DOWD
The flinty 71-year-old kept it together as John McCain pounced and Hillary prodded. But soon he was once more giving snippy one-word answers to his inquisitors, foisting them on his brass menagerie or biting their heads off himself.
By Friday evening, when the delegate from Guam, Madeleine Bordallo, pressed him on whether "quality of life" was an issue in the Abu Ghraib torture cases, you could see Donald-Duck steam coming out of his ears.
"Whether they have a PX or a good restaurant is not the issue," he said with a veiled sneer.
Rummy was having a dickens of a time figuring out how a control-freak administration could operate in this newfangled age when G.I.'s have dadburn digital cameras.
Even if the secretary survives, the Rummy Doctrine ?- using underwhelming force to achieve overwhelming goals ?- is discredited. Jack Murtha, a Democratic hawk and Vietnam vet, says "the direction's got to be changed or it's unwinnable," and Lt. Gen. William Odom, retired, told Ted Koppel that Iraq was headed toward becoming an Al Qaeda haven and Iranian ally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/opinion/09DOWD.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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