As far back as October of last year, Sen. John McCain’s been urging various forms of U.S. military engagement with the blooming civil war in Syria. Appearing on PBS Newshour Thursday, McCain suggested again that the U.S. should arm the Syrian rebels, and cited a precedent of the Libyan revolution to make the case.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But would you also need some sort of ground forces in the area —

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: No.

JUDY WOODRUFF: — because Assad’s forces are operating very much in the middle of the civilian population.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We would not.

Putting U.S. ground forces in would be not only not appropriate, but counterproductive. We just need to arm and equip these people, the same way that we did in Libya.

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The problem? No reliable reports ever indicated that the U.S. armed Libyan rebels. Indeed, while speculation was rife, and bureaucratic authorizations for such actions existed, administration officials consistently denied that the U.S. partook in funneling arms to militas battling late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s military.

Amid pressure to now arm the Syrian rebels, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice made the exact opposite point McCain did on Thursday:

Wolf, even in Libya, we did not take the very exceptional decision to arm the opposition. And in Syria, we know much, much less about the nature of this opposition. It’s not coherent….

So to argue that we ought to be arming the opposition is a very consequential statement. And I don’t think that those that are advocating that have fully thought through the consequences.

The Libyan rebels were instead armed by various other U.S. allies, such as the tiny Gulf sheikhdom of Qatar. Those Qatari arms flowed with the knowledge of the U.S.. The New York Times reported this week that Syrian activists said exactly the same dynamic was already at work in Syria, with the U.S. “consulted” on the weapons transfers of Qatari purchases of Turkish anti-tank missiles for Syrian fighters. “Officials in Washington said the United States did not take part in arms shipments to the rebels, though they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so,” the Times reported.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is making waves in recent interviews, displaying a strikingly simplistic understanding of the foreign policy challenges faced by the Obama administration. Last night he did it again in an interview with Fox News’s Greta Van Sustern, during which he declared that Moscow has “Muslim problems” and Russia’s GDP is comparable to Portugal’s:

GRETA VAN SUSTERN: Are we drifting back towards the era of the Cold War?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t think so. Russia is a totally different thing than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. Russia’s got probably a GDP about the size of Portugal except for their energy. They’ve got problems with their borders. They’ve got Muslim problems with their population. They’ve got alcohol problems. They’ve got a large prison population. They have difficulty with conscripts in their military. They’ve got an outflow of educated people who are going to better places. They have trouble attracting industry outside the energy business because of rule of law issues and corruption. So it is a totally different thing from the Soviet Union.

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Indeed, Russia is very different from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But Rumsfeld’s casual relationship with facts and his willingness to declare Russian Muslims a “problem” is surprising from a former cabinet level official.

George W. Bush made it a point after the 9/11 attacks to specify that “Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith,” but Rumsfeld’s statement about Russia’s “Muslim problems” offers no subtleties about Russia’s challenges with Chechen separatists and buys into the language of Islamophobes who advocate that Western countries are at war with Islam and all Muslims.

When not painting all of Russia’s Muslims as “problems,” Rumsfeld casually dismisses of Russia’s GDP as “about the size of Portugal except for their energy.” An examination of Russia’s economy, as listed in the CIA World Fact Book, shows a GDP of $2.38 trillion, the sixth largest in the world. And Russia’s gas industry reportedly makes up only 25% of Moscow’s current gross domestic product. Even subtracting that 25% (bringing Russia’s GDP down to $1.785 trillion) Russia’s economy is still tenth biggest in the world and far outpaces Portugal’s GDP of $246.9 billion.