Words can be hammers, or swords, beating and slashing through walls of ignorance and lawlessness. Two examples might be our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Yet, words have meanings, and shadings, and can be interpreted differently, and thus can be as light as a feather, as momentary as a cloud’s shadow. An example of such might be a comical “get well” card from a co-worker.

Because words are also fragile things, even though they leave indelible footsteps, the Department of Defense has taken the extraordinary step of establishing a website to explain away all those inconvenient inconsistencies between what they say, and as everyone knows, the facts have a liberal bias.

One could also say that what they’re doing is explaining why what you heard them say is not what they meant. Because our Defense Department is a one-man franchise, like Bu$hCo itself, we find the 21st century equivalent of the Red Guards of the 1960s, little red book raised high, chanting in unison as they parrot the opinions of Chairman Rumsfeld.

Isn’t it interesting that Bu$hCo is a cult of the personality, like dictatorships of the past?

Case in point: this story.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that anyone demanding deadlines for progress in Iraq should "just back off," because it is too difficult to predict when Iraqis will resume control of their country.

The DoD website carefully explains that the AP is wrong and Secretary Rumsfeld never said that, as can be plainly seen by reading the transcript of the press conference from which the AP erroneously created this false quote. While addressing a question about how the “benchmark” system of transferring control of the country to the Iraqi central government, Secretary Rumsfeld said.

You could sit down today and take the remaining 16 provinces in the country and say, well, when -- today, when do we -- the U.S. and the Iraqis -- government -- think that this province might move over to the governance of the Iraqis instead of the multinational force? What about this province and that province? And you could lay out and say, well, in this quarter or this two- or three-month period that might -- we might be able to do that, and lay it out. And as I've said before, in some cases you may beat it; you may do it faster than that. In some cases you may do it later than that. In some cases you may do it exactly when you thought and then find it didn't work out, and then you'd have to go back in, take it back, fix it, and then give it back again.

Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.

So you ought to just back off, [em added] take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult, that honorable people are working on these things together; there isn't any daylight between them. They will be discussing this and discussing that; they may have a change here or a change there, but it will get worked out. And the value of it, in my view, is that you are, in effect, establishing priorities. You're saying, among the coalition and the Iraqi government, that the goal is to kind of get from where we are to there, and "there" is having the Iraqis govern their country and provide for their own security. And the way to get there is in steps. And we've already passed over two provinces to the Iraqis, and we've already passed over some divisions to the Iraqi military chain of command.

Hopefully, this clears up any confusion you readers might have had about the AP and its erroneous quote of Secretary Rumsfeld.

In an editorial on October 24th, the NY Times wrote:

There have never been enough troops, the result of Mr. Rumsfeld’s negligent decision to use Iraq as a proving ground for his pet military theories, rather than listen to his generals. And since the Army and Marines are already strained to the breaking point, the only hope of restoring even limited sanity to Baghdad would require the transfer of thousands of American troops to the capital from elsewhere in the country. That likely means moving personnel out of the Sunni-dominated west, and more mayhem in a place like Anbar.

Mr Rumsfeld’s personal website for correcting the record wrote to the Times on the same day, (New York Times Involved in Mythmaking) indicating that serving generals, still on active duty and still in uniform, have said that Mr Rumsfeld has given them all the troops they need. The letter offered the Times the chance to correct its editorial. (The letter made no commentary about general officers no longer on active duty, and thus no longer under Mr Rumsfeld's command, who have stridently criticized the handling of the conquest and occupation of Iraq.)

These statements are not new, nor difficult to find in public sources. So the implication is that either the New York Times believes these generals are not being truthful, or that they are too intimidated to tell the truth. If the Times feels this way, way not say so? For our part, we vigorously dispute either assertion about these distinguished military leaders.

The Times claims to correct “all errors of fact.” Please correct this at once or provide us with demonstrable facts that support your assertion.

As noted on the official Rumsfeld correction webpage, “The New York Times has declined the Pentagon’s request to correct its editorial.”

There are other examples, and one could spend hours searching the website to learn just how often our media, and reality, have conspired to confound Mr Rumsfeld’s view of the world.