The Daily Background
| Woodward: Rumsfeld used a ‘fruitbowl’ analogy to explain attacks on US troops
by Arlen Parsa
Another excerpt from Bob Woodward’s State of Denial:
In July 2006, I told Rumsfeld that I understood the number of attacks [on US troops] was going up. “That’s probably true” he said.
“It’s also probably true that our data is better, and we’re categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack, and all the way up to killing 50 people some place. So you’ve got a whole fruit bowl full of things… A banana, an apple, and an orange.”
I was speechless. Even with the loosest and most careless use of language and analogy, I did not understand how the Secretary of Defense would compare insurgent attacks to a fruit bowl: a metaphor that stripped them of all urgency and emotion.
The official categories in the classified reports that Rumsfeld regularly received were the lethal IEDs, standoff attacks with mortars, and close engagements such as ambushes. As far from bananas, apples and oranges as possible.
The Zune concentrates on being a Portable Media Player. Not a web browser. Not a game machine. Maybe in the future it’ll do even better in those areas, but for now it’s a fantastic way to organize and listen to your music and videos, and is without peer in that regard. The iPod’s strengths are its web browsing and apps. If those sound more compelling, perhaps it is your best choice.