Rumsfeld: Courageous or Confused?

Kristin Roberts reports:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned potential adversaries on Monday that the United States remained capable of responding to military threats at home and abroad, despite its troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We are capable of dealing with other problems were they to occur,” he told troops at an airfield in the Nevada desert … Rumsfeld said there was no doubt the United States could win militarily in Iraq if it stayed the course. “The important question is not whether we can win. Of course we can win. We won’t lose a single battle,” he said. “But do we have the will?”

That was yesterday. I wonder if a good night’s sleep brought a fresh perspective to our very confused Defense Secretary? Let’s see what he said today in Salt Lake City:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq and counterterrorism policies of lacking the courage to fight terror. In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral and intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security.

I guess we all know how Karl Rove plans to play the November elections!

Update: Matthew Yglesias fires back at Rumsfeld and later offers us the thoughts of Senator Reid:

Secretary Rumsfeld’s reckless comments show why America is not as safe as it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to the war in Iraq. If there’s one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it’s Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to succeed. Under this Administration’s watch, terror attacks have increased, Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin. We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong since the start of the Iraq War? Or, do we change course in Iraq and put in place new leadership that will put the safety of the American people ahead of partisan games? For the sake of the safety of this country, it is time to make a change.