Donald Rumsfeld’s just had a whip round Asia doing his thang, trying to make business deals with the Chinese while telling them they care too much about arms, the usual hoary old hypocrisy.
There was a terrific picture of him in formal talks with Vietnam’s Minister of We Don’t Really Care that had that huge bust of Ho Chi Minh keeping an eye on the proceedings, but I prefer this one of him getting chirpy with a guide at Hanoi’s Temple of Literature. Looks like the fetching ao dai she’s wearing had him playing a little pocket billiards.
With all due respect to the uniform watching them, he seems to be thinking there’s another kind of deal in the offing and he might be able to shake a few dong of his own out of it.
Rumsfeld was in Vietnam, by the way, “to boost military ties”.
Hah HAH!

Somehow the usually uptight Singaporeans were able to see the humour in all of this. That’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his interpreter having a good laugh at Rummy’s expense. The warmonger is fuming.

So Donald gets back to Washington and finds out his portrait is to be part of an art exhibition in Baghdad. Seems like a nice gesture, except that “Picnic”, by a rather miffed Muayad Muhsin, attempts to capture the essence of Iraqi sentiments toward the United States, which did such a fine job of toppling Saddam and then couldn’t keep his damn collection of cockroaches in the bottle.

I’m not sure what’s going on in the painting, but the defence secretary looks pretty casual while Iraq’s heritage is crumbling.

Speaking of Saddam: An actual photo of him trying out the US military’s new holding cell …