Rumsfeld Speaks, Democrats Screech

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON --This week in his speech before the national convention of the American Legion, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made an unconscionable faux pas. He defended our present policy in Iraq and our war on terror by citing historic events and quoting Winston Churchill and Georges Clemenceau. That is a rude way to discuss policy with one's Democratic opponents. The historical record is a particularly sore subject with the likes of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who inveighed against Rumsfeld's speech as "reckless." History has not been going his way for a while. Reid's equivalent in the House of Representative, the Hon. Nancy Pelosi, spoke of the Secretary's impairment...and she was not referring to his golf swing. Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused Rumsfeld of questioning the critics' patriotism.