Who says we never learn our lesson?

Secretary of War Robert Gates repeats the Republican claim, beloved of John McCain as well, that “As soon as the Soviets left Afghanistan, we turned our backs on Afghanistan”, without saying precisely what the US was supposed to have done. Invaded in 1996? At any rate, “I believe we’ve learned our lesson,” which is not surprisingly to never ever stop occupying Afghanistan. For the right-wing, lessons learned from history always –always – involve starting yet more wars and occupying yet more countries, and not, for example, never get involved in a land war in Asia, or even, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

(By the way, when I reference The Princess Bride, it’s the book, not the movie.) (Not that I have anything against the movie. On the contrary.)

How long is that in slog years?

America will not accept a “long slog” in Afghanistan without signs that “we are making headway,” Secretary of Long Slogs Robert Gates says. If eight years isn’t a long slog, I wonder what is?

He says we’ll need to show progress by 2 Friedman Units from now. If we do, “then you can put more time on the Washington clock.” Oh good.

Lord make a way

Palin and the witch-hunter.

Secretary of War Robert Gates in Afghanistan, offering his “personal regrets” for all the civilians we keep bombing: “While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder.” Really, no military? Because the Swiss Army has been preventing civilian casualties quite effectively lately by not, you know, invading anybody.

I firmly believe that if you have low expectations, you’ll achieve them

The US has moved a second aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, into the Persian Gulf. Secretary of War Robert Gates says the move “could be seen... as a reminder.” Oh good.

Today Bush met at the White House with the national teacher of the year, Mike Geisen of Prineville, Oregon, and the state teachers of the year. Mr. Geisen provides us that great rarity, a picture in which George Bush is not the goofiest-looking individual.


CERTAINLY NOT HIS ENGLISH TEACHER: “You know, I like to tell people that -- you know, one of the interesting questions you get in my line of work is ‘Can you name a teacher who had influenced you?’ I said, ‘Yes, my wife.’” Dude, at an event for teachers, you’re really not supposed to imply that none of your teachers ever influenced you. Although I’m sure all his teachers went into hiding long ago out of sheer shame.

SPECIAL: “And really the best teachers have a special intuition -- and I suspect a little potential -- the ability to see potential and the ability to have the patience necessary to watch it grow.”

STILL CALLS: “It basically -- if you really think about the [No Child Left Behind] Act, it, one, refuses to, what I used to call -- still call -- refuses to accept the soft bigotry of low expectations. I firmly believe....” STRAIGHT LINE ALERT! STRAIGHT LINE ALERT! “...that if you have low expectations, you’ll achieve them.”

WHAT A TEACHER OUGHT TO WELCOME: “I also believe that if you’re a teacher that you ought to welcome a law that says we trust you in your ability to set high expectations.”

HE JUST COULDN’T REFRAIN FROM BRINGING RELIGION INTO THE CLASSROOM, COULD HE? “And I ask God’s blessings on your work and the work of teachers all across America.”

Caption contest

Secretary of War Robert Gates and Colonel Combover in Baghdad.

Wherein an adjective is applied to Germany that is rarely applied to Germany

SecWar Robert Gates was just in Europe, or Old Europe as his predecessor called it when he went there to make friends and influence people. Gates is bitching about the Europeans’ unwillingness to send troops into combat in Afghanistan, because if there’s one thing that’s always effective with Europeans, it’s being hectored publicly. When Germany objected to his tone, he accused it of being “a little overly sensitive”.

History takes a long time for us to reach (Updated, with a scurrilous calumny)

Follow-up: Sgt Evan Vela (see previous post) sentenced to 10 years.

Secretary of War Robert Gates spoke at the Munich Conference on Security Policy today. A Russian member of parliament asked him in the Q&A whether the US hadn’t created its own problem in Afghanistan by funding the mujahedeen. Gates responded, “If we bear a particular responsibility for the role of the mujahedeen and Al Qaeda growing up in Afghanistan, it has more to do with our abandonment of the country in 1989 than our assistance of it in 1979.” So the lesson is, once you intervene in another country, you have to keep doing so, forever.

Bush was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox today (taped Friday).

CONVINCING TO CONVINCE: He said that McCain is a true conservative, that “His principles are sound and solid as far as I’m concerned,” but “if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative.”

Speaking of solid, he says that Huckabee was fat and now isn’t, which is why he’d also be a good president. Or something: “I remember Mike when he weighed a lot and I’ll never forget getting off at the airplane and there he was at the foot of Air Force One and I couldn’t recognize him. And the reason I bring that up is he’s disciplined.”

He refused to believe that any Republican candidate could possibly disagree with him: “I’m sure that you can find quotes from people running for office that sound like they’re at odds with me.” What about Huckabee’s remark that Bush’s foreign policy showed an arrogant bunker mentality? “I think he has tried to walk back that position.”

But in the end, it all comes down to, um, reality: “And I confident that the nominee will be the person who is capable of assuring the American people, one, the reality, I see the reality. And secondly, I’ve got a plan to deal with it.”

On Barack Obama: “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.”

(Update: the Fox transcript is atrocious, getting curiously opaque when Bush fires this scurrilous calumny at Obama: “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and break the Mani Mijad (ph). I think (INAUDIBLE) that in a press conference.” The WaPo is clearer: “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad.”)

On why it’s pointless to try to make rich people pay their taxes: “I promise you the Democrat party is going to field a candidate who says I’m going to raise your tax. If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.”

SUCCESS, YOU SAY? WHY THAT’S SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK! “You know, I met with General Petraeus when I was in Kuwait on my trip to the Middle East. And my message to the general was, success is paramount. And therefore, whatever you recommend, make it based upon the need to succeed.”

OR NOT: “But I will listen, give them careful consideration and make up my mind. But it is going to based upon whether or not we can succeed or not.”

ON WATERBOARDING PAST: “First of all, whatever we have done was legal...”

AND FUTURE: “...and whatever decision I will make will be reviewed by the Justice Department to determine whether or not the legality is there.”

A FAIR QUESTION: “And for those who criticize what we did in the past, I ask them, which attack would they rather have not permitted - stopped? Which attack on America did they - would they have said, well, you know, maybe it wasn’t all that important that we stop those attacks.”

ABUNDANTLY CLEAR TO NERVOUS NATIONS: “In my trip to the Middle East I made it abundantly clear to nervous nations that Iran is a threat. And that’s what the NIE said if you read it carefully.” However, “the NIE sends mixed signals.”

OUR GOAL IN IRAN: “To pressure them to the point where we hope somebody rational shows up and says, OK, it’s not worth it anymore.”

HISTORIOGRAPHY: “it’s very hard to write the future history of America before the current history hasn’t been fully written.” So true. “And as far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”

BOOKS THAT HAVE WRITTEN: “There just isn’t - objective history. I don’t know how many books that have written about my administration, probably more than any other president, which actually says I’m doing something.” He’s said this before; he really believes there are more books about him than about Lincoln or JFK or FDR, because he’s just that important.

Asked what advice he might give his successor: “Rely upon a higher power to help you through the day.” He makes being president sound exactly like working a 12-step program.

Caption contest:

With success like this...

Headline of the day (LA Times): “Schools Scramble to Find Questionable Meat.” I didn’t even know there was a shortage of questionable meat.

Secretary of War Robert Gates says that Friday’s suicide bombings in Baghdad markets are a sign of desperation, “a manifestation of the success of our military operations.” Woo hoo! And on Thursday, Gates said that the increasing number of casualties in Afghanistan caused by suicide bombings and IEDs is a sign that the Taliban have “failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.” Double woo hoo! USA! USA!

A rather extraordinary sentence from John McCain, which I evidently missed two weeks ago: “It’s not social issues I care about.” He was talking about abortion and gays, the only social issues Republicans care about, but boy he really is running to be a president who will just occupy himself doing the war thing and not bother with any of the other piddling small stuff.

By the way, when I googled “It’s not social issues I care about,” looking for more context, Google asked, “Did you mean: ‘Its not social issues I care about’”. Et tu, Google? Et tu? Here’s that context: “It’s not social issues I care about. It’s the Constitution of the United States I care about.” That piece from the WaPo’s campaign blog also quotes him saying, “The rights of the unborn are as important as the rights of the born.” Absolutely, the right of the fetus to free exercise of religion, to bear arms, and not have soldiers quartered in the womb he or she inhabits, should be sacrosanct.

Hey guys, wanna march in step towards the sound of the guns?

Secretary of War Gates, at the Conference of European Armies, demanded, again, that NATO countries (lookin’ at you, Germany) end the limits on the use to which their troops in Afghanistan may be put. “As you know better than most people, brothers in arms achieve victory only when all march in step toward the sound of the guns.” I think he thinks he’s fighting the Crimean War. He also stole some rhetoric from John F. Kennedy, saying that “In Afghanistan a handful of allies are paying the price and bearing the burdens.” He threatened to pull American troops out of Kosovo and suggested that Americans might begin to question the utility of NATO.

He suggested that those military leaders pressure their political leaders to lift those restrictions. Civilian rule is so darned inconvenient.

Underestimating the depth of the misunderstanding and mistrust

In February I passed on a story in the Sunday Times about a 5-year old Palestinian girl, Marya Aman, whose family’s car was hit by an Israeli rocket, killing her mother, brother and grandmother and turning her into a quadriplegic. The Israeli High Court has now temporarily blocked the attempt of the government to forcibly remove her from her hospital bed in Jerusalem to the West Bank (what’s left of her family lives in Gaza), where the inferior care available might well kill her. So, um, hurrah for the Israeli High Court.

Actually, I had rather assumed that the original story would have embarrassed the Israeli government into acting like human beings. Silly me.

Secretary of War Robert Gates went on Meet the Press today. He continues to be wildly successful in his job, which consists of not being Donald Rumsfeld. He suggested that reconciliation is not going well in Iraq because “I think we, perhaps, all underestimated the depth of the misunderstanding and mistrust among these sections, among these factions in Baghdad over time”. Mistrust certainly, but not misunderstanding: the factions understand each other perfectly well. That is why they mistrust each other.

He says that the “military side of the surge” has been successful, and he offers proof in a not entirely reassuring manner: “There’s one major town – I’m not going to name it because I don’t want it to be a target – but there’s one major town in Anbar that has not had a, an IED explosion since February.”

Asked if the US might act unilaterally in Pakistan, á la Obama, Gates said, “I think we would not act without telling Musharraf what we were planning to do.” So that’s okay then.

“President” Karzai is in Camp David. For the second time in a week, Bush engaged in his favorite game of aiming his golf cart at the press corps, pretending he intends to run them over, with a world leader in the passenger seat (and the First Ladybot, who actually has killed someone with a motor vehicle). Hilarity ensued.



Where can I get me one a those hats?

Meanwhile in Seoul, there was a demonstration demanding that the US negotiate for the return of the Korean missionaries being held and/or executed by the Taliban. One of the demonstrators wins the prize for creepiest mask at a demonstration.

You’ve really put yourself on the wrong metric

Secretary of War Gates and the alliterative Peter Pace held a press conference today.


Gates, asked if ignoring (as he plans to do) the recommendation of a Pentagon study on the mental health of combat soldiers that soldiers who go through 90 days of heavy fighting then be rotated off the front-lines for 30 days won’t increase the number of serious mental-health problems, said, “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.” Won’t we just. He then added that we’ll just have to have to have more resources to treat them.


Asked about the possibility of seeing violence in Iraq actually go down, Gates said, “Well, I think, first of all if you try to define this in terms of level of violence, you’ve really put yourself on the wrong metric. It isn’t about X number today, Y number tomorrow, because the enemy gets a chance to vote in that. And he will take a look at what you’re measuring and try to defeat that measurement, so to speak.” So the reason violence is the wrong “metric” is that the enemy can commit as much violence as they want. Isn’t the point supposed to be to stop them doing that?

So what’s the right metric? “The metric really should be for Iraqi citizens, do they feel better about their lives today than they did yesterday? ... If you had zero violence and people were not feeling good about their future, where are you?” Alive?

So it’s about perceptions. It’s also about denying perceptions. Gates says that “the security environment is providing what it should be providing” if Iraqis “see that their country is moving forward without regard to the specific instances of violence”. You know, progress, except for all the killing and explosions and shit. How are they supposed to look at the state of Iraq without regard to specific instances of violence? Repression. Earlier in the Q&A, Gates showed how it’s done:

Q: Yes. Mr. Secretary and General Pace, it’s been a pretty bad couple of days in terms of losses -- American losses in Iraq. I think it’s 12 in the last two days killed. Is this something we’re going to expect and to be bracing for in the coming weeks and months as we have the tempo of operations increase and we have the surge forces on the ground?

And if I could also, just picking up on the question about the 1920s Brigade, do you have some concern or pause about working and joining forces with groups that so recently had been aiming some of their fire power or affiliated with those that have been aiming their fire power at American forces?

SEC. GATES: Remind me again what your first question was.

Q: It was about the 12 deaths in the last few days.

See? It only takes him 12 seconds to forget all about 12 deaths. Oh, he’s good.

Fashion

Now Lou Dobbs is complaining that Mexican lepers are coming into this country and taking jobs away from American lepers, or something.

Secretary of War Robert Gates has made a “surprise” visit to Iraq. How does he stack up against previous surprise visitors?

more at twiigs.com...

A divisive ordeal

Secretary of War Robert Gates had made a momentous decision: saying that “a divisive ordeal at this point is not in the interests of the country or of our military services, our men and women in uniform,” he has decided to replace the alliterative Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because his confirmation hearings would have been “contentious” and “backward-looking.” So the divisive ordeal Gates wished to spare our men and women in uniform was... the sight on C-SPAN of Pace being asked some questions about his previous job performance, possibly in a harsh tone of voice. His replacement is, Reader points out in comments, the alliterative Michael Mullen.


Gates makes it clear that he thinks Pace the better man for the job, and that it is solely the contentious hearings at which he balked. Not the vote, which he knows he’d win. He also said he made his decision after he was warned about the hearings being all contentious-y by senators. Of course it’s obvious that the Democrats would be a problem, and I’m sure the prospect of listening to Joe Biden go on and on makes us all feel tired, but I suspect what Gates was told that made him bail on Pace was that the Republican senators weren’t prepared to cheer-lead for him this time.

A day like that can have a real psychological impact

Russia is building a floating nuclear power plant. Gee, what a good idea, why didn’t we think of that? Russia plans to sell them to other countries.

Secretary of War Robert Gates (I’m officially dumping the little pictures of gates – live with it), on a “surprise” visit to Iraq, visited Fallujah, the city on which the US shat from a great height, to gush about the “really good news story” in Anbar province: “It’s a place where the Iraqis have decided to take control of their future. The Sheiks have played a key role in making good things happen out here, along with the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army and with our help.” That “decided to take control of their future” line is the perfect combination of condescending paternalism and empty-headed corporate-management-speak.

Gen. Petraeus admits that Wednesday, with its “sensational attacks,” was “a bad day.” It’s that sort of realism that makes him such a breath of fresh air. He adds, “And a day like that can have a real psychological impact.” Yes, because if you were to characterize the sort of impact made by the deaths of 200 to 300 people in bombings, you would definitely say “psychological.” He said that Al Qaida is “trying to reignite sectarian violence,” although he did not say when it was ever unignited (disignited?)

Adding to quality of life

Media Matters points out that while Bush in his immigration speech this week claimed that the decrease in arrests of illegal border-crossers proved that his policies have been effective – “When you’re apprehending fewer people, it means fewer are trying to come across” – in a November 2005 speech he cited increased arrests as proof of his policies’ effectiveness.

If you’re wondering, yes, if arrests neither increased nor decreased, that would also show that his policies were working.

Secretary of War Robert

and the always alliterative Peter Pace held a press conference about extending deployments from their current 12 months to 15 months, effective immediately. Gates explained that this policy would “give greater clarity and fairness.” Assuming your idea of clarity and fairness is to be stuck an additional 3 months in Iraq or Afghanistan while hostile locals shoot clearly and fairly at your ass. Pace says that the increased length of combat will also increase quality of... quality of... quality of what now? “[T]hey will have a predictable life; that they can sit there around the dinner table and know that on calendar month so- and-so, daddy’s going to leave, and on calendar month so-and-so, mommy’s going to come home, and those kinds of things, which add to quality of life.”

And yes, that’s assuming mommy doesn’t come home a little bit earlier in a body bag. And that the Pentagon doesn’t change its mind again, as Gates pointed out with clarity and fairness: “That does not mean that something could not happen tomorrow that would cause our nation to need more of our armed forces to go do something different.”

Maverick John “Maverick” McCain the Maverick gave a speech about Iraq at the Virginia Military Institute today (Note: link is to the prepared remarks). He said of his trip to Baghdad, “Unlike the veterans here today, I risked nothing more threatening than a hostile press corps.” That explains the body armor and military escort: he was afraid of an attack by Helen Thomas. Well, fair enough.

He tried to portray himself as a realist about Iraq. He distanced himself from “false optimism,” saying that he preferred to offer “ersatz optimism.” Okay, he didn’t. He said, “I took issue with statements characterizing the insurgency as a few ‘dead-enders’ or being in its ‘last throes.’” Sure you did, John.

You’ll notice he’s willing to criticize the false optimism of Rumsfeld or Cheney but not that of Bush.


Much of the speech was spent impugning the motives of politicians who oppose the war for seeking “the expediency of easy but empty answers,” “the allure of political advantage,” and “the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll,” and for engaging in “fanciful and self-interested debates” and “giddy anticipation of the next election.” Someone needs to ask him if it’s only Democratic politicians who are being base and cynical, or if that also applies to the majority of Americans who oppose the war. “Before I left for Iraq, I watched with regret as the House of Representatives voted to deny our troops the support necessary to carry out their new mission. Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the last votes were counted. What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender? In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering.”

He did say one thing that I entirely agree with: “If fighting these people and preventing the export of their brand of radicalism and terror is not intrinsic to the national security and most cherished values of the United States, I don’t know what is.” I agree: you don’t know what is.

Bad Reporter.

A great reluctance to engage in happy talk

Headline of the week, from the Press Association: “Slavery Shame of Easter Eggs.” However, don’t click on the link unless you want to feel depressed about eating chocolate, which will just make you want to eat more chocolate.

Moronic right-wing talk show question, Laura Ingraham interviewing Secretary of War Robert

Wednesday on the consequences of Congress cutting off funding:

SEC. GATES: Well, if there were a complete cut off of the funds, I mean, there’s no question that that would bring an end to the war. We would have to come home if there were no funds at all.

INGRAHAM: Would you even have money to come home at that point? I mean, coming home costs money. I mean, really.

SEC. GATES: Well, I think we’d find the money to bring them home...

Ingraham’s interrogation also extracted from him vital information on his barbeque preferences (pork ribs).

And in a press conference today Gates said that it will be impossible to make “any real evaluation” about the “surge” for several more months, and “there is a great reluctance to engage in ‘happy talk’ about this.”

Happy hour, on the other hand...

I think that the way I would characterize it is so far, so good

I’m half-way through watching An Inconvenient Truth, so it’s cheering to hear Hillary Clinton talk seriously about energy conservation: “I turn off a light and say, ‘Take that, Iran,’ and ‘Take that, Venezuela.’ We should not be sending our money to people who are not going to support our values.” I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which “values” her comment illustrates.

She also said that the war in Iraq should never have been started but that now, “we have to end the war in the right way.” I wonder how many people throughout history have died pointlessly because someone wanted to end a war “in the right way.”

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On Face the Nation (pdf), Secretary of War Robert

adopted the cheery optimism about Iraq that made his predecessor so beloved: “I think that the way I would characterize it is so far, so good.”

He did, however, distinguish himself from Rumsfeld in one respect. Where Rummy had his staff affix his signature to letters of condolence to the families of dead soldiers with an autosigner, Gates says, “I always add three or four lines in handwritten personal feelings at the end.” It’s the least he can do. The very least.

He utilized what is evidently a new bit of Pentagon terminology, for the practice of insurgents leaving Baghdad during the “surge” and carrying on as usual elsewhere in Iraq: “a squirting effect.”

Speaking of surge ‘n squirt, Gates said he had “too much on his plate” to think about revising Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Yeah, yeah, you were all thinking it.

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Are the protesters all gone yet?

A habit of blunt speaking

Secretary of War Robert

was exposed to a blistering attack on American world dominance and unilateral military actions by a cranky Vladmir Putin. “Why should we start bombing and shooting now at every available opportunity?” he asked. I assume that’s a trick question.


Gates dismissed that as Cold War rhetoric. “Old spies,” he said, “have a habit of blunt speaking.” He added that the problem with America’s reputation in the world couldn’t possibly be American policies but that we haven’t explained them well enough. He said that in the 20th century, most people believed that “while we might from time to time do something stupid, that we were a force for good in the world.” Now, of course, they think that while we might from time to time do something good, we are a force for stupid in the world.

A NYT article about politicians finding new ways to circumvent rules about taking money from lobbyists contains this reassuring comment from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA): “Only a moron would sell a vote for a $2,000 contribution.”

Explosively foreign

Today Secretary of War Robert

held a press conference in Seville. He was asked about the much-postponed public presentation of the “proof” of Iranian assistance for Iraqi insurgents. He blamed Iran for the new bugaboo, the “explosively formed projectile,” which he seems to have called “explosively foreign projectiles.” That may be a transcript error, but I do love the idea of a projectile, or indeed anything else, being explosively foreign. [Update: it is a transcript error.]

He admitted that the evidence is “very ambiguous,” and went on to add some ambiguity of his own: “In terms of the particular, it’s the sophistication of the technology. I think that there are some serial numbers. There may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found.” That’s a lot of qualifiers about a form of evidence as specific as serial numbers. And wouldn’t you think they’d have filed the serial numbers off?

Asked if he was consciously adopting a different style than Rumsfeld’s with our Old European partners at the NATO [correction: international security] meeting, he claimed not to be familiar with the man: “I wasn’t in Washington, so I don’t know very much about the style of my predecessor, by golly.” I may have added the last two words.

Gen. David Petraeus, aka Colonel Combover,


has been talking up Fallujah as the model for Baghdad. He evidently means not the part about bombing it into rubble, but the part about treating it like the Gaza Strip, with restricted access to what they’re laughingly calling “gated communities,” fingerprinting, i.d. cards, etc. Petraeus’s deputy, British Lt-Gen. Graeme Lamb (not really the butchest name, is it?), says that we know Fallujah is doing well now because the city’s Business Association now has 340 members. So it was all worth it.

The best plan is to have this plan succeed

Brent Scowcroft, testifying on Iraq before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, used a familiar obnoxious analogy: “When you’re training your child with training wheels on the bicycle, how do you know when to take the training wheels off? I don’t know.”

Bushies are beginning to use admission of the mess that Iraq has become to their own advantage, by suggesting that it’s so completely impossible to comprehend what’s going on there that there’s no point in even trying to set up standards to measure whether we’re making progress or not. Chuck Hagel repeatedly asked Scowcroft for such a standard, getting this response: “It would be nice to be precise and to have all these benchmarks that everybody can see and so on. This is not that kind of a problem. We’re in a mess, and we’ve got to work our way out of it.” He went on to list various things that needed to be accomplished to work our way out of it. “Then,” responded Hagel, “how do you measure that?” Scowcroft: “The way you measure anything.”

Such a disconcertingly unhelpful response has not been heard since Rumsfeld last trod those halls.

The em-messification of Iraq is also now being used as a reason not to call it a civil war. Last year, it wasn’t a civil war because it wasn’t that bad yet; now it’s just too messy. Secretary of War Robert

this morning said that civil war is “a bumper sticker answer to what’s going on”.


Naturally, he couldn’t comment on the new National Intelligence Estimate, because he held a press conference without having read it, an old Rumsfeld trick. The NIE’s summary (pdf), the only part we’re allowed to see, while saying Iraq is actually more fucked up than the term civil war implies (“does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict”), does say that the term “accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.”

National Security Adviser Stephen “Boo” Hadley also squirmed his way out of using the term civil war at a press briefing today:

Q: Can you call it a civil war, and why haven’t you?

HADLEY: We know what kind of fight we’re in. We know the facts. That is described well in this NIE, and we have a strategy to deal with those facts and to try to succeed.

Q: Is it a civil war?

HADLEY: I will tell you what this NIE says.

Q: I want to know why you avoid using that term.

HADLEY: Because it’s not an adequate description of the situation we find ourselves, as the intelligence community says. ... And what we’re doing is saying, if you’re going to run policy, and if you’re going to explain it to the American people, we need to get across the complexities of the situation we face in Iraq, and what is our strategy to deal with that.”

Because the Bush administration is all about getting across complexities. Known for it, really.

Hadley continued to embrace sophistication and complexity when summing up the NIE: “one of the things you should conclude from this NIE is the best plan is to have this plan succeed.”