Truman got it right

摘要

In the year-long "showdown with saddam," as one news channel tagged it, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld systematically portrayed himself as a plain-speaking guy in the mold of the now much-beloved Harry Truman. Despite his many faults, Truman was a straight shooter. Rumsfeld is anything but; he is a masterful dissembler. Consider Rumsfeld's games with the words "preemption" and "prevention." In late September, shortly after the administration's new preemption strategy was unveiled, a reporter asked Rumsfeld why he had used the words preemption and prevention "almost interchangeably" during testimony on the Hill. Rumsfeld acknowledged that there were "differences" between the two words and that he had been "a bit sloppy in using them somewhat interchangeably." But he then slopped around some more, suggesting in the end that the two words meant roughly the same thing.