Donald Rumsfeld began his new book tour with some frank comments, including these:

"War lies?  Does anybody really give a rat's ass now? You know what?  You know what?  They do.  They do because war lies are actually cool now.  We began the invasion of Iraq in October 2001, but the invasion of Iraq paid off."

Rumsfeld revealed the strategy behind the revelations made in his book about the illegal secret operations he helped set in motion shortly after the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001:

"Former President Bush has not admitted to torture or fraud or aggression or the rest of it, and do you know why?  You do know why, but it is an unknown known, if you know what I mean.  Yes, it is funny.  He hasn't admitted to any such things because he has chosen to claim them proudly instead. 

"Did I say I knew where the WMDs were?  Did I say I had bullet proof evidence of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda?  Of course, I did.  I can't deny it.  I mean, I used to deny it, but what the hell?  Spain didn't blow up the Maine.  Wise up, people.  The Lusitania was full of troops and guns and that was announced before it sailed.  If you think FDR didn't see Pearl Harbor coming I've got some yellow cake to sell you!  We don't go to war with the drooling obedient zombies we might want or wish to have at some future time.  There was no Gulf of Tonkin incident.  Are you stupid?  You thought the Iraqis took babies out of incubators in 1991, didn't you?  Admit it.  Didn't you?

"We say what has to be said to accomplish that which in retrospect will be understood as irreparable.  I won't deny it.  I cannot deny it.  What I can do is reveal that when I claimed to know where the WMDs were I had within the previous 20 minutes consumed over half a bottle of gin.  I'm not defending it.  I'm laughing in your sad pathetic faces, and yet I cannot even bring myself to grow annoyed at your inability to grasp that fundamental fact.

"Once we'd expended hundreds of billions of dollars killing hundreds of thousands of people and completely devastated the nation of Iraq, with the only tangible result being a dramatic rise in anti-American sentiment and violence around the world, I proposed a different strategy, and do you know what that jack-ass post-turtle two-bit moron from Crawford did?  He told you all that he would keep me on after the election.  After the election he gave me the old snake-skin boot in the posterior and told you that he'd had to lie to you so that you wouldn't know the truth.  And you said 'Oh OK, well that's all right then.  Thanks for explaining it to us.  Thank you, sir, may we have another?  Thank you, sir, may we have another?'  You dumbasses.

"You want to learn something about the way the world works?  Buy my book.  Do you know why Ronald Reagan was a great president?  Do you want me to tell you?  Because he believed his own bull.  That's what it takes.  You think we lie to you for the good of the nation.  That's not how it works.  We lie to ourselves for the good of our careers, and the marketplace of ideas makes that good for the nation.  Or not.  That's a known unknown.

"Let me just leave you with this, you embarrassing facsimiles of sentient animals.  Let me provide you, outside of your comprehension, a little demonstration of your inability to be awakened by a five alarm fire in your jock straps.  Are you ready?  Here it goes.  We're making progress in Afghanistan.

"You've been a great audience.  Jesus, what a world."

This has been a complete fabrication which you might as well attribute to Curveball.

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie."  See http://warisalie.org