{"id":5949,"date":"2005-11-30T09:34:02","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T14:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5949"},"modified":"2005-11-30T09:34:02","modified_gmt":"2005-11-30T14:34:02","slug":"a-different-kind-of-attack-on-insurgents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-different-kind-of-attack-on-insurgents\/","title":{"rendered":"A different kind of attack on ‘insurgents’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the war in Iraq has progressed, semantics debates have become needlessly, maddeningly, prevalent. We’ve seen drawn out arguments over whether to call the U.S. presence in Iraq an “occupation.” We’ve had a strange but earnest discussion<\/a> over whether we’re engaged in a “global war on terror” or a “struggle against violent extremism.” In each instance, top administration officials played both sides of the fence.<\/p>\n

But yesterday, Rumsfeld took this semantics game to a new level<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last weekend, while other Americans were watching football and eating leftover turkey, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ended the Iraqi insurgency.<\/p>\n

It was easy, really: He declared that the insurgents would, henceforth, no longer be called insurgents.<\/p>\n

“Over the weekend, I thought to myself, ‘You know, that gives them a greater legitimacy than they seem to merit,’ ” Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon briefing yesterday, said of his ban on the I-word. “It was an epiphany,” he added, throwing his hands in the air.<\/p>\n

Encouraging reporters to consult their dictionaries, the defense secretary said: “These people aren’t trying to promote something other than disorder, and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate and then spread it around the world. This is a group of people who don’t merit the word ‘insurgency,’ I think.”<\/p>\n

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, standing at Rumsfeld’s side, evidently didn’t get the memo about the wording change. Describing combat in Iraq, he paused and said, “I have to use the word ‘insurgent’ because I can’t think of a better word right now.”<\/p>\n

” ‘Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government’ — how’s that?” Rumsfeld proposed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over Thanksgiving, some people have turkey, some people watch football, and Donald Rumsfeld comes up with a new name for insurgents<\/strike> “enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government.”<\/p>\n

I’m wondering if Rumsfeld is trying to look silly or if it just comes naturally to him. Either way, this is just embarrassing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the war in Iraq has progressed, semantics debates have become needlessly, maddeningly, prevalent. We’ve seen drawn out arguments over whether to call the U.S. presence in Iraq an “occupation.” We’ve had a strange but earnest discussion over whether we’re engaged in a “global war on terror” or a “struggle against violent extremism.” In each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}