Context for Rummies lie:
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Let me include the rest of his answer, since you chose not to (I wonder why?):
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/t03302003_t0330sdabcsteph.html
Second, the criminal facilities, there are dozens of them, it's a large geographic area. It is the -- Answar Al-Islam group has killed a lot of Kurds. They are tough. And our forces are currently in there with the Kurdish forces, cleaning the area out, tracking them down, killing them or capturing them and they will then begin the site exploitation. The idea, from your question, that you can attack that place and exploit it and find out what's there in fifteen minutes.
I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting.
(emphasis mine)
Note that the very next sentence (particularly the bolded part) to the supposed lie actually supports Rumsfeld's claim that he meant facilities, and not WMD's. Without that next sentence, it indeed seems that Rumsfeld's "they" means WMD's, and you can blame him for bad or ambiguous language, but he's got a case that he meant "facilities". When people talk, they don't actually make paragraph breaks, so let me repost the quote with a different cut:
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. Second, the criminal facilities, there are dozens of them, it's a large geographic area."
Doesn't it read like "they" could mean "facilities"? It does to me.
Furthermore, look at the bolded part at the end: Rumsfeld explicitly denies that he knows with any certainty where WMD's are at the moment he gave the interview. If you take the view that his earlier statement means he knows where WMD's are, and not facilities, then he's just contradicted himself. If, however, you take the view that he's refering to facilities, then there's no contradiction at all. If you want to claim he lied, then you also need to prove that it's the original statement, and not the subsequent contradiction, which someone who listened to the WHOLE THING could be expected to believe.
You can blame him for making a statement which seems ambiguous, or is easy to misread, but it's hard to portray it as a definitive claim of knowledge when he specifically disavows having such knowledge.
Your case looked SO nice, and I actually wondered whether you were right, until I read his whole response. At that point, it became pretty clear to me that Rumsfeld had pretty solid grounds for his response to McGovern, and that it was selective quoting which made it appear so clear-cut. I'm just wondering, though: have you ever SEEN the full response before, or did you only get the partial response from your sources and conclude that you understood the case? I'm guessing the latter, that you were merely duped, but I could be wrong.
