Rich Lowry is in love!

[Cocoa]

with Donald Rumsfeld!

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200408101635.asp

EN ROUTE TO OMAN, JORDAN — Don Rumsfeld is standing at the head of a small cabin of severely jet-lagged journalists, who crowd around him with tape recorders, notebooks, and the occasional boom mike. I have never been around him in person before. He is a little shorter than you might think watching him on TV. But otherwise he's all Rummy, including the obsession with precise language and the passion for discussing the intricacies of policy issues. He's wearing a gray Airborne windbreaker emblazoned with "SEC DEF RUMSFELD," gray corduroy slacks, and casual brown shoes. Often he talks with his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders for emphasis. When he talks with his hands or points a finger a camera clicks as a photographer tries to catch him in an animated shot.

<snip>

When the questions turn to creating a national director of intelligence, Rumsfeld gives us all some of his famous Rumsfeldian analytic rigor. He says creating a NDI is fine, but how will it create better intelligence? That's the question. He quotes Mencken to the effect that to every problem "there's a solution that's simple, neat, and wrong." Improving our intelligence will take work that doesn't lend itself to a "bumper sticker."

Then you see the wheels really start to turn. He's obviously really interested in this question. He discusses the ins and outs, throwing out a few profound questions — Is it sill possible to keep a secret in our society; Is there a difference anymore between domestic and foreign intelligence? — before stopping and ending the briefing. Then he can't help himself and starts talking again, returning to the question of whether there's a distinction between domestic and foreign intelligence (which had been raised only by Rumsfeld's own inquisitiveness). "That's a humungous issue," he exclaims, to himself as much as anyone else. "Think about it," he urges us. No doubt no one will be thinking about it more than Don Rumsfeld himself, a thinking man's secretary of Defense.

[Veggie Meathead]

1. Was he thinking about the tortures at Abu Ghraib when Rich Lowry went into

multiple orgasms?

[GR]

2. Franken Should Have Beaten Him Up When He Had A Chance...

Lowry makes me ill...Just like David Bobo Brooks does...He said on Matthews Sunday no one knows how they would react when put in the situation Bush was in in that classroom on 9/11. Right there he lost every shred of credibility he ever had or will have....Everyone knows how they would react...if they were president...and it wasn't what Bush did...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. And to think!

Rich typed this with ONLY ONE HAND!!! AMAZING!!!

[rooboy]

4. I bet Rich had a cigarette after that one... n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Geography memo to Lowry

Oman is a country on the other side of the Arabian penninsula from Jordan. The Jordanian capital is Amman. Try finding out a little about these countries before you go to them, and then assume to pontificate.

[Cocoa]

6. holy crap

nice catch! Lowry doesn't even know what country he was in.