Rumsfeld is out flogging his book and appeared with Jon Stewart. As is often the case when he interviews powerful government officials, Stewart was not at his best. I have noticed that in these situations Stewart seems to go overboard in trying to be nice to his guest and as a result they get away with claims that he should have directly confronted.

Rumsfeld, once so arrogant, condescending, and dismissive of anyone who even questioned him, now looks and acts like a pathetic old man, trying to explain away his horrible actions while in office, trying to weasel out of responsibility for his monstrous crimes by acting as if he, a control freak, had been misled because he trusted others who were wrong about the evidence in making the case for going to war with Iraq. Despite all the evidence that he was one of the key people pushing to invade Iraq, Rumsfeld now acts like he was a bystander during the whole process while others made key decisions. The book has received terrible reviews and was too much even for court stenographer Bob Woodward. Rumsfeld is simply a brazen liar.

During the interview, Rumsfeld did the usual diversionary song-and-dance that we have become accustomed to from high government officials, invoking 9/11 even though Iraq had nothing to do with it, weapons of mass destruction when Iraq did not have any, pandering to the military, and the tired trope of ‘keeping us safe’. I would have expected Stewart to have tons of videos of Rumsfeld ready at hand to contradict Rumsfeld’s apologias, the way Stewart did so effectively with Jim Cramer. But he didn’t, allowing Rumsfeld to whine about how everyone was so mean to them because were all so misunderstood, the poor babies.

Stewart also did not challenge Rumsfeld’s claim that the people who were involved in all these decisions, such as Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Doug Feith, were all ‘honorable’ people. This is a familiar tactic. Each person goes around saying that the others are honorable and so we are expected to believe that all the massive screw-ups that occurred under them were acts of god, that inexplicably happened despite the noblest intentions of the principal players involved.

I do not accept that premise. I am not aware of what went on in the private meetings but what is available publicly presents a prima facie case that these people were not honorable but instead cooked up evidence and deliberately lied to the world in order to push a covert agenda that was not in the interests of the US or the Iraqis. It is up to them to prove to us that they acted honorably and we should not accept their own self-serving assurances, the way that Stewart did.

Stewart did not even ask Rumsfeld about torture and Abu Ghraib, all of which happened under Rumsfeld’s watch, and for which he is now liable for arrest if he travels abroad. Stewart was far too deferential to someone whom I consider to be a liar and a war criminal. What Stewart should do is not interview such people but instead take their interviews with other people and critique them.

For what it’s worth, you can see the two–part interview here.