From Today's Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: I think the concern that many people have is that if we were wrong or misjudged that, are we making some other misjudgments now? This is how The Washington Times reported in exchange before the hearings. "[Sen. Carl] Levin asked whether the general thought the insurgency was in its `last throes,' as Mr. Cheney said ... last month. `In terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I'd say it was the same as it was' six months ago, Gen. [John] Abizaid replied."Bad foreigners, bad.
For the sake of clarity for the American people, what about this insurgency? Is it in its last throes or is it alive and well and vibrant and strong as it was six months ago?
SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Well, there are various ways to measure it. If you measure the number of incidents, it's gone up during the election period and now it's back down. If you look at lethality of those instances, it's up. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that the insurgency's stronger? Is it in its last throes? The last throes could be violence, as you well know from a dictionary standpoint. I think the way to think of it is that the insurgents are foreigners in some significant number. They are attacking Iraqis and killing them...
So, besides the whole semantics game about "last throes" and their complete inability to be honest, do the Bush people really not get that the US are foreigners who invaded Iraq first? Um, isn't that what got this whole quagmire started -- when Iraq was invaded by foreigners from America who were killing Iraqis. As it stands now, the trouble is that there is an insurgency, of mostly foreigners, who are fighting foreign invaders. Bush and Rumsfeld don't seem to grasp that we are considered foreign invaders, too.
