Iraq: Rumsfeld blames media "exaggerations"

yahoo/reuters: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday there has always been a risk Iraq could slip into a civil war but he accused the news media of exaggerating the severity of the current situation.

"I do not believe they're in a civil war today," Rumsfeld told a
Pentagon briefing. "There's always been a potential for a civil war. That country was held together through a repressive regime that put hundreds of thousands of human beings into mass graves."

"It was held together not by a constitution, not by a piece of paper, not by respect for your fellow citizens of different religious faiths. But it was held together through force and viciousness," Rumsfeld added.

[Seymour Hersh differs on this point: "Sunnis and Shi'ites, despite the fact that the Sunnis as a minority have always effectively ruled Iraq, have never had this sectarian instinct. It's not a sectarian society, it's a tribal society. People are intermarried.

You know, I was at the funeral of a Sunni and asked his brother, you know, he'd been murdered - probably by Shi'ites, I think - I asked his brother if there was going to be a civil war and he said look, I'm married to a Shi'ite. You want me to kill my wife? Why do you westerners always want civil war?

The first people to mention civil war were the occupation authorities. The Iraqis were not."]

Reuters item continues:
..."From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said.

"Interestingly, all of the exaggerations seem to be on one side. It isn't as though there simply have been a series of random errors on both sides of issues. On the contrary, the steady stream of errors all seem to be of the nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq."

Asked whether he believed these "exaggerations" by the news media were intentional, "Oh, I can't go into people's minds." Read more