How would I know if I ever spoke about it with the vice president over five years?

As a fan of old-timey radio drama, I enjoyed being the recipient of a little mini-melodrama yesterday , on my phone. Next week we in California have a proposition requiring parental notification for abortion, so today the phone rang with a recorded call purporting to be from a mother with a vaguely Hispanic accent whose daughter’s boyfriend’s mother had taken her to an abortion clinic, and when she went to the rescue, they wouldn’t let her in and threatened to call the police. Who were these monsters to keep her from her daughter? All this with ominous music in the background. Very gripping. I give it two fetus-thumbs up. (If anyone has seen or heard this online, or can remember more details than I can, please tell us in comments.)

The WaPo has agreed with a CIA request not to say which Eastern European countries host secret CIA prisons holding secret CIA prisoners being subjected to secret CIA tortures. Discussing the CIA’s attempts to house-hunt for their new gulag, the Post notes that it considered an Alcatraz-type situation in the islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, but decided that the Zambians might not be capable of keeping the secret CIA prisons secret. You know, even if the thought of your government engaging in torture doesn’t bother you, how wise is it that governments like Egypt, Jordan, Thailand, Uzbekistan and those unnamed Eastern European ones have information they can use for blackmail?

At a press conference, Rumsfeld was asked about the forcible feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo:

But there are a number of people who go on a diet where they don’t eat for a period and then go off of it at some point, and then they rotate and other people do that. So it’s clearly a technique to try to get the attention of you folks, and they’re successful.

“Go on a diet”?! GO ON A FUCKING DIET!!???!!!!!!!

He also claimed the decision not to let the UN inspectors talk with Guantanamo prisoners wasn’t his or the Pentagon’s, but a “government decision, a matter of policy,” which is rather mysterious and opaque.

Asked whether the Pentagon was involved in any way with Cheney’s efforts to smear Joe Wilson: “Not to my knowledge, but how could one answer that? I mean, you’ve got a department of hundreds and thousands of people, millions of people, and you say, ‘Was this department in any way involved in some allegation?’ My goodness gracious.” Well, I’m reassured. Asked if he personally had spoken with Cheney about Wilson, he responded

I -- how would I know if I ever spoke about it with the vice president over five years? I don’t recall speaking it -- with him about it, and I don’t recall the department being involved. Is it possible? I mean, my goodness, that’s -- that question is such a -- it’s -- what is that game? Fish. Give me all your sevens or something. I mean, that’s not for me.

And another in the long list of things Rummy does not have knowledge of: before naming Dorrance Smith to be assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs, he never bothered reading Smith’s op-ed accusing the media of being complicit with terrorists. It’s long past time Rummy retired to the old war-mongers’ home and played some, what is that game? Fish.