The Soft-Shoe Stylings of Donald Rumsfeld

This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert featured an all-entertainment show (click for a transcript). He talked to Bono about Live 8 and poverty in Africa and featured Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the opening act. Rumsfeld was quite entertaining dancing around any questions Russert posed to him (and Russert, for once, was a little bit pressing--not demanding, by any means, but not dropping a subject after Rumsfeld indicated he didn't want to talk about it, either). There were a number of highlights, but here are a couple of my favorites:

RUSSERT: So never any mistake made on troop level?
RUMSFELD: Who knows? Time will tell.

. . .
RUSSERT: Did you make a misjudgment about the cost of the war?
RUMSFELD: I never estimated the cost of the war. And how can one estimate the cost in lives or the cost in money? I've avoided it consistently. And how can that be a misestimate?

. . .
RUSSERT: What is the problem with arming these Humvees so our soldiers won't get hurt?
RUMSFELD: They are arming the Humvees. They've gone up like this, and they've gone from a few hundred to tens of thousands of armored vehicles in there. . . . And they've been working their heads off on doing it, and they've done it at a very rapid clip.

Can anybody remind me how the liberal media ever found these kinds of mumble-mouthed nonanswers charming?