It's Just Getting Ridiculous Now, Isn't it?

Rumsfeld says Cheney's "last throes" in Iraq could last a decade or more:

"We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years...

The fact is that if you look at the context of his remarks, last throes could be a violent last throe, just as well as a placid or calm last throe. Look it up in the dictionary.

Still not the slightest intimation of personal responsibility...

Rumsfeld's tortured explanations follow these tortured words from Cheney last week:

"If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period."

Gary Younge quotes George Orwell:

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue," wrote George Orwell in his essay In Front of Your Nose. "And then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."