The Bush Administration Style Manual

Rule 1: It's not an insurgency if we don't call it an insurgency. Unintentional humor from Rummy:

More than 2½ years into the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has decided the enemy are not insurgents.
"This is a group of people who don't merit the word 'insurgency,' I think," Rumsfeld said Tuesday at a Pentagon news conference.
He said the thought came to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.
"It was an epiphany."

***
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."
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?"

This is the same party that makes hay out of campus speech codes, right?

This blog rarely comments on national/international news, but I'm making a helpful exception. If the administration needs a new word to describe the situation in Iraq, I suggest "clusterfuck."