Illusions of Optimism

During recent testimony before a Senate Committee, Donald Runsfeld said:

"You'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic."

Keith Olbermann took up the challenge, providing video quotes of Rumsfeld on earlier occasions of optimism, as seen here: Double Dare Ya!

In What, me rosy?, Dick Polman also remarked on Rumsfeld's remarks:

My dictionary defines delusion as "a false belief strongly held, in spite of invalidating evidence." In other words, a government official is delusional when he insists on believing and stating a falsehood that is demonstrably disproved by factual reality.

Exhibit A: Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who was recently lauded by President Bush for "doing a fine job."

Rumsfeld has been symptomatic in the past. For instance, in September 2003, when he was reminded by a questioner that he had predicted prior to the Iraq war that the U.S. troops would be warmly welcomed by the Iraqi people, he insisted that he had said no such thing: "Never said that. Never did...You're thinking of somebody else." He stuck to his story, even though there was videotape of him declaring, seven months earlier, that "there is no question that they would be welcomed" by the Iraqis, and that the Iraqis would behave like the people in Afghanistan, "playing music, cheering, flying kites."

Fast forward to Rumsfeld's testimony today before a U.S. Senate committee. (Yesterday morning, he said he wouldn't appear because his "calendar" was full. Later, that full calendar magically opened up.) Anyway, while testifying, he told the senators that he had “never painted a rosy picture” about how the war in Iraq would go; in fact, he even insisted that "you would have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been overly optimistic.”

There he goes again, with those symptoms.

Polman follows with his own list of optomistic (delusional) Rumsfeld quotations, in his American Debate blog.

As I noted in He Knows About Which He Speaks, it's just another example of the tale of the Scorpion and Frog -- that is, "when a Republican is asked why he lied, when the truth is recorded and so most likely will be uncovered, the Republican responded: "I could not help myself. It is my nature." See also, Did I Say That?

Tags: Keith Olbermann, Donald Rumsfeld, Politics, Video