Good keerist, the hagiography continues. How is a sentient being to respond? Does our 4th Estate have a responsibility to inform the citizenry, or has our Paper of Record been taken over by the editors of People Magazine? What in God's name could compel anyone -- anyone -- to write this drivel about a man responsible for war crimes? I am struggling for my sanity here. This fiend is the architect of a war that is unnecessary, illegal, poorly planned, amoral, and under which the rules of war (aka the Geneva Conventions), agreed upon by all democratic nations for the last 50 years, have been denigrated, diminished, and dismissed.
A war. Where bombs are dropped on innocent people. Where poor, young Americans are sent to fight for abstract words that have lost their meaning. An actual war, as in killing and destruction. Does the NYT not know what a war is? Do they think it is akin to macho grandstanding by septuagenarians on a squash court? Has the fucking press lost its damn mind?
Rumsfeld Also Plays Hardball on Squash Courts.
For the last six years, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has slipped down to the Pentagon basement many afternoons, changed into a T-shirt, sweat pants and headband, and spent a heart-thumping hour playing squash.
There, no matter how the war in Iraq was going or how many Democrats were calling for his head, Mr. Rumsfeld could uncork his deadly drop shot, leaving his foe helpless and himself triumphant, at least for a moment.
Jeebus H. Keerist.
In some ways, squash offers a window into Mr. Rumsfeld’s complicated psyche, revealing much about his stubborn competitiveness and seemingly limitless stamina. Pentagon officials and employees say Mr. Rumsfeld’s play closely resembles the way he has run the Defense Department, where he has spent six years trying to break the accepted modes of operating.
“He hits the ball well, but he doesn’t play by the rules,” says Chris Zimmerman, a devoted squash player who works in the Pentagon’s office of program analysis and evaluation and is sometimes in the Pentagon athletic complex when Mr. Rumsfeld is on the court.
Mr. Zimmerman has never actually played his boss. But he says he has noticed that Mr. Rumsfeld, 74, often wins points because, after hitting a shot, he does not get out of the way so his opponent has a chance to return the ball, a practice known in squash as “clearing.”
So he's a cheater. And dishonorable and ungracious. Yes, his squash game does tell us a lot about him.
Mr. Rumsfeld took up squash more than 20 years ago when he was a business executive. Rather than tricky bank shots off the walls, a move that better-skilled players favor, Mr. Rumsfeld plays with power, hitting the ball hard and ending points quickly. And he relentlessly attacks his opponent’s confidence.
“When you try a shot and miss, he’ll say, ‘You don’t have that shot,’ ” said Lawrence Di Rita, a close aide who played against Mr. Rumsfeld regularly until leaving his job at the Pentagon this summer.
Mr. Di Rita is a former Naval Academy varsity player more than 25 years younger than Mr. Rumsfeld. He says he lost his share of games and never went easy on his boss. By tradition, the loser posted the score on Mr. Rumsfeld’s office door, so his staff would know when he had beaten Mr. Di Rita or his other main partner, his military assistant, Vice Adm. James G. Stavridis, who was also on the academy squash team. Mr. Di Rita concedes that Mr. Rumsfeld rarely offers or asks for “lets,” a replay point when one player feels aggrieved.
On the court, “he is very aggressive and he is very intense,’’ Mr. Di Rita said. “He is very good at getting inside your head. He’s everything you would expect Donald Rumsfeld to be.”
Mr. Rumsfeld has declined invitations to play against reporters, as well as to describe his game for this article.
Mr. Rumsfeld himself has suggested that his ideas about transforming the military into a smaller, more agile force, like the one he pushed for in invading Iraq, were influenced by his squash playing.
In an interview with the military writer Thomas P. M. Barnett last year, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “I play squash with him,” gesturing at Mr. Di Rita. “When I pass him in a shot and it’s a well-played hard shot, I saw speed kills. And it does. If you can do something very fast you can get your job done and save a lot of lives.”
This criminal thinks "shock and awe" on the squash court is going to translate on the ground in a war?? Smelling salts, please! Am I reading this man's confessional in the NYT? Is this the worst attempt at mythologizing I have EVER read, or could it be that these delusional megalomaniacs think that cheating at squash is the least bit instructive in the war theater?
I must be living inside a science fiction novel. Or else this is a stress test.
And isn't this illuminating? As per usual, we need someone outside of our system of loyalist yes men to speak the truth to this asshole:
Mr. Rumsfeld (does not) lack for bravado. Mohamed Awad, a former champion
player who was once ranked as high as ninth in the world, spent a half
hour hitting with him last February at a racquet club in Munich, where
Mr. Rumsfeld was attending a military conference.
Mr. Rumsfeld
plays well for a man his age, Mr. Awad said. Afterward, he said, Mr.
Rumsfeld suggested that he could outplay another septuagenarian
politician still known for his prowess in squash, the 78-year-old
Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.
“I
told him, ‘That can’t be right because I have played with Mubarak, and
he is much better than you are,’ ” said Mr. Awad, an Egyptian who now
lives in Germany.
Mr. Rumsfeld, he said, just laughed. Pentagon
aides say that they do not recall Mr. Rumsfeld boasting about being
better than Mr. Mubarak.
::cough::Bullshit!::cough::
I give up.
