Rumsfeld made these statements in Singapore last Friday at the so-called Asia Security Conference held by London based cold war era think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

His comments were followed, predictably, by the chief leak of Pentagon "secrets", reporter Bill Gertz of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, who revealed a witch hunt for Clinton era double-crossers who've obscured the true extent of Chinese military power.

Yet China's defense expenditure is a tiny fraction of the USA's according to a report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The USA alone accounts for almost half (nearly USA $500 billion) of all global spending on arms.

And India's economy according to the 2005 AT Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine global competitiveness ranking is worse than any other country except Iran and well below China.

Meanwhile the latest topic of the blame China crowd is anti free market demands for huge tariffs on Chinese imports (attention K-Mart shoppers: all merchandise at twice the price!).

As if the Iraq quagmire was not proof enough, this week's run-up to the summer bash China campaign shows that in Washington reality is very much what you make it.

©2005 Ben Calmes, Sinomania!