Charles Rangel: “I tell you as a lawyer and someone that would advise somebody, I would not ask them to ask to see Secretary Rumsfeld.…”

“I tell you as a lawyer and someone that would advise somebody, I would not ask them to ask to see Secretary Rumsfeld. Members have to remember this is the same person that told the whole country that he did not know whether we were winning or losing the war. Is that something to tell someone? He said that it is a slog, whatever the heck that is. And he said something that he was so right in, that he really did not know whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. And we can answer him, and the world can, because we lack the sensitive sophistication to understand that a life is a life, whether it is an American, whether it is an Iraqi, in the tens of thousands and sometimes the hundreds of thousands. I talked with Colin Powell about this and I asked him, How do you train a young patriotic soldier to go to a foreign country to kill terrorists that you do not know what they look like, what uniform they wear, what language they speak, and you can only react when you are being fired upon? Can you imagine how many terrorists we create when these cowardly people go to a school, go to a hospital, go to a mosque and fire at our troops? And those who have served would know, you have no option except to destroy where that fire is coming from. And if you destroy innocent people, we no longer call that human life. You know what we call it? Collateral damage.”