Rummy has an epiphany
This is priceless. Rummy had "an epiphany" - his words - over Thanksgiving turkey. He's finally figured out who the "enemy" in Iraq is.
"This is a group of people who don't merit the word `insurgency,' I think," Rumsfeld said Tuesday at a Pentagon press conference. "I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe," he said. "These people don't have a legitimate gripe."Really. Those darned ingrates. Don't appreciate being liberated from a stable dictatorship and being gifted with a chaotic Islamic republic complete with factional genocide and enforced by an armed occupation of foreign forces. But it's hard to give up that ingrained terminology.
Even Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood beside Rumsfeld at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term `insurgent.'Is it me or does this remind you of the time they tried to rename/reframe the war on terror as Serial Attacks on Vengeful Extremists?
After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, "I have to use the word `insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now."
Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How's that?"
posted by Libby Spencer at 5:19 PM
4 Comments:
I actually saw that section of the press conference, must've been in a commercial break, but it was funny as hell. Pace stumbling over the words then turning to Rumsfeld with this helpless look on his face.
I don't see the video yet in any of the usual places. If I come across it, I'll forward the link.
Let me make an addition. I also remember way back when this whole thing started watching Rumsfeld go after some reporter in a press conference for calling the Iraqi insurgents guerillas. Then on another occasion he went after the term Iraqi resistance.
You can't control my mind, Donald. Reality is stronger than your Orwellian languange.
Still no video link, though.
Mike
I remember Rummy's tantrums as well Mike. And didn't Pace just submit a plan a couple of weeks ago that called for large scale withdrawals starting in January?
Rummy ignored it on a Sunday talk show a couple of days later and now the two of them doing the dog and pony show?
It's clear they don't even know what they're doing. They make it up as they go along.
If you get the video, I'd love the link. I'll bump up the post for it.
yes, and yes.
And I saw a very small clip of it on Olberman's show tonight, but not enough to really appreciate the awkwardness of it. I've been keeping an eye out for it, but I haven't run across it anywhere online.
Have a nice night.
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