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May 7, 2004

Department of Headlines Somebody Should Have Reconsidered. From the New York Times:

Rumsfeld Accepts Blame and Offers Apology in Abuse

If so, I’m sorry I missed the show. Is this like playing the dozens? Can he say other things in abuse, too? [10:31 PM]

Welcome to Electrolite's comments section.
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Comments on Department of Headlines Somebody Should Have Reconsidered.:

Nancy Hanger ::: (view all by) ::: May 07, 2004, 11:31 PM:

Next on the agenda for defense department training:

Abusive Apologies 101

Mary Kay ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 02:05 AM:

What I want to know is how he gets to accept responsibility without suffering any consequences. That's a trick that could come in handy.

MKK

julia ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 03:50 AM:

I would be willing to condition for the apology thing if we can agree that any headline about this story which contains the word "probe" or (saints preserve us) the phrase "hit with probe" should be forced to bathe in hawaiian punch and then spend the day at the beach surrounded by small children without bathing first.

chris ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 04:22 AM:

Apology in abuse: "Look, I'm sorry, you son of a bitch. Now will you shut the fuck up." Sounds like their normal discourse to me.

Ray Radlein ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 04:31 AM:

My entry for Bad Headlines recently was the initial CNN.com report on the ruling striking down Florida's "Up Yours, Michael Schiavo" Law: For several hours, the headline on their web site read "Court Overturns Bush's Brain-Dead Woman Law".

Great!, I thought. Maybe they'll strike down the rest of his brain-dead laws as well.

Kathryn Cramer ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 09:29 AM:

Speaking in abuse sort of like speaking in tongues except that no snake-handling is involved. And indeed, the reast of the brain-dead laws have to go.

lightning ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 11:08 AM:

What I want to know is how he gets to accept responsibility without suffering any consequences.

It's called "doing a Janet Reno" -- take all of the responsibility onto yourself so that nobody below you in the organization has to take any, and then ignore it. Usable only by those in high places. (I've seen it done in the corporate world, too.)

Kevin J. Maroney ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 12:09 PM:

My association with the phrase "I take full responsibility" goes back to Reagan, who "took full responsibility" for the bombing deaths of 241 Marines by, apparently, shrugging and squinting.

Arthur D. Hlavaty ::: (view all by) ::: May 08, 2004, 07:29 PM:

The Yahoo headline early this morning was "Rumsfeld Apologizes for Abuse, Says Worse to Come." Interesting ambiguity.

James D. Macdonald ::: (view all by) ::: May 09, 2004, 11:05 AM:

Rumsfeld on the Geneva Conventions:

...

Precisely because murder and rape and torture are more common during wartime, past U.S. governments have ratified the Geneva Conventions, which were designed to enforce the rule of law, however badly or weakly, during wartime. But although these particular international laws have never been controversial, it has nevertheless became fashionable, in some Washington circles, to argue that America is now somehow above them and to suggest that they need not be taken quite so seriously as in the past. Back in February 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay were not even entitled to a hearing establishing whether the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war applied to them. Perhaps it didn't, but Rumsfeld wasn't willing to prove the case in a court: "The set of facts that exist today with the al Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned," he claimed.

...

Jeremy Leader ::: (view all by) ::: May 09, 2004, 02:51 PM:

The set of facts that exist today with the al Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Convention was fashioned," he claimed.

Hmm, that argument applies equally well to the Constitution, doesn't it?

And to any other body of law.

What about the Bible? "The set of facts today aren't the same as when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments."

It's awe inspiring how quick the Right is to seize on moral relativism as a defense!

Anyway, early May is an interesting time to be claiming "they didn't have to deal with anarchists blowing things up back in the good old days".