February 9, 2004 - After David Kay made public his conclusion that the weapons the administration used to sell the war in Iraq were non-existent; the product of a systemic intelligence failure; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld continued to claim that the weapons were there and would be found. He coined a pithy epigram, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." That argument seems to have gained a life of its own made applicable by the Bush team to every situation in which the accuracy of an administration account might be questioned. Chicken George seized on the Rumsfield theorem repeatedly in his interview broadcast on Meet the Press on Sunday Feb. 8 th 2004.

The session was taped in the Oval Office rather than being framed in the program's usual live format and the host, Tim Russert, omitted to follow up on many of the President's less than forthcoming answers. While Russert touched on the areas in which the re-election campaign is thought to be the most vulnerable he let the many of the President's statements go without tough follow-up questions. The President used the theorem on, of course, questions about the failure to find Iraqi weapons; the failure of his tax cuts to produce the new jobs he promised that they would; and, most egregiously, questions about his missing National Guard service. The most telling exchange was this:

RUSSERT: The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of their [National Guard] records and said there's no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.

BUSH: Yeah, they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged. In other words, you don't just say "I did something" without there being verification. Military doesn't work that way. I got an honorable discharge, and I did show up in Alabama .

To accept that answer is to accept that the Alabama Air National Guard was so incompetent that it failed to keep records of its member's service. It is a familiar refrain that we have come to expect. It is always some one else's fault. This time the Presidential finger points to the Alabama National Guard.

Chicken George's "trust me" answer should remind us of another epigram coined by a previous Republican administration and to apply its test, "Trust, but verify", and you don't get verification from the absence of evidence.