Testifying before Congress today, Donald Rumsfeld said he has ?never painted a rosy picture? about Iraq, and that ?you would have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I have been overly optimistic.? (video)

That’s just nonsense. How about this quote from a speech Rumsfeld delivered at Johns Hopkins on Dec. 5, in which he slammed the U.S. press for being overly negative in its Iraq reporting.

“[U.S. reporters] can compare Iraq as it is today to what it was three years ago: a brutal dictatorship, where the secret police would murder or mutilate a family member, sometimes in front of their children, and where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis disappeared into mass graves. From that perspective, Iraq today is on a vastly different and a greatly improved path.”

A vastly different path? The Baghdad morgue received 1,595 bodies last month. Last month! And that’s up 16% over May.