November 29th, 2005 6:18 pm
Rumsfeld: Don't Call Them 'Insurgents'
By Robert Burns / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - More than 2 1/2 years into the Iraq war, Donald H. 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 had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.
"It was an epiphany."
Rumsfeld's comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.
"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." Still,
he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard
definition of `insurgent.' He promised to look it up.
Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as "rising up against established authority."
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?"
At another point in their news conference, Rumsfeld and Pace had
an unusual exchange in which Rumsfeld corrected his senior military
adviser, only to have Pace gently insist that it was the defense
secretary who was wrong.
A reporter asked Pace what U.S. commanders in Iraq are supposed
to do if they find Iraqi forces abusing prisoners. Pace replied that if
inhumane treatment is observed it is a service member's duty to stop
it.
"I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it — it's to report it," Rumsfeld said, turning to Pace.
Replied the general: "If they are physically present when
inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try
to stop it."
So when you become Secretary of State, you not only get to make up your own word definitions, you get to alter military policy on-the-fly too? 
