Rumsfeld is not concerned so much with losing control in Iraq as much as losing the PR battle at home with the media’s useful idiots and their shameless regurgitation of terrorist propaganda:

Rumsfeld was asked whether the criticism he draws as Pentagon chief and a leading advocate of the war in Iraq is an impediment to performing his job. He said it was not and he knows from history that wars are normally unpopular with many Americans. “I expect that,” he said. “I understand that.”

“What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is,” he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

“They are actively manipulating the media in this country” by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

“They can lie with impunity,” he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct.

I would say he has a right to be worried. What with the staged media stories of death in Qana (here for my post and here for EUReferendum), the staged ambulance attack, the staged Reuters attack, and the staged-doctored photos (here, here and here). It is easy to understand why Secretary Rumsfeld would be concerned about the media’s gullibility and culpability when it is on display so often and so well. The terrorists want us to runaway from Iraq and the ME – that is clear in everything they have written, said and pronounced. The fact the media never checks to see if they are being duped after all this evidence points to something more than ignorant bliss at work.