Associated Press photo
BOO!: Donald Rumsfeld, shown today with his usual look of holding his claw-like fingers in front of his face like he's trying to spook you, says that those in Iraq who oppose the Bush regime's illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialist invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in which more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died "don't have a legitimate gripe."
Call them freedom fighters
Today U.S. Secretary of Semantics Donald Rumsfeld stated that Iraqis fighting the U.S. occupation of their country shouldn't be called "insurgents" because, he said, "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. These people don't have a legitimate gripe."
Apparently Rumsfeld finds this idea of his to be pretty fucking brilliant, because he called it an "epiphany."
Since Rumsfeld thinks that word games are more important than having an exit strategy, let's go ahead and play word games.
Rumsfeld used the word "legitimate" three times in the quote above.
Hmmm.
The members of the Bush regime lied to the American people and to the world when they claimed that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and possessed weapons of mass destruction that made them an imminent threat.
Based upon these bold-faced lies, the Bush regime invaded Iraq in March 2003 against the wishes of the United Nations and against world opinion.
The international consensus is that the invasion was illegal -- and thus illegitimate, just like George W. Bush's presidency.
Because the Bush regime's invasion and subsequent occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq are illegitimate, those fighting against it certainly have a legitimate cause.
Their methods, such as killing innocent Iraqi civilians in suicide bombings, might be illegitimate, but their cause is quite legitimate.
The Bush regime has no fucking interest in bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq; the Bush regime is interested only in enabling its corporate cronies to squeeze every penny from Iraq that they can while they still can, using the "freedom" and "democracy" bullshit as a cover for the pillaging and plundering of Iraq.
"President" Bush repeatedly has said that U.S. troops will leave Iraq when the Iraqis can protect themselves.
That's pretty fucking funny, because if the Bush regime really gave a flying fuck about the welfare of the Iraqi people, why has it slaughtered more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians since March 2003? Why do car bombings and suicide bombings and kidnappings continue, unabated, even in the heart of Baghdad? Saying that the U.S. troops will leave when the Iraqis can protect themselves implies that the U.S. troops are protecting the Iraqis now, yet more than two and a half fucking years into the Bush regime's occupation of Iraq, the number of Iraqi civilians who are being slaughtered has not decreased.
What's the Bush regime's plan for Iraq? Americans ask as if they didn't know.
The Bush regime's plan for Iraq is to steal as much from Iraq and from American taxpayers via Iraq for as long as possible.
That's why Bush keeps saying that he rejects any timetable for the pullout of U.S. forces -- even though Iraqi leaders last week said that they want such a timetable.
These very same Iraqi leaders said that Iraqis have a "legitimate right" to resist the U.S. occupation. That's right -- they used the word "legitimate." That was their epiphany.
These Iraqi leaders even said that "insurgents" should not be labeled as "terrorists" if they don't target innocent Iraqi civilians or institutions that provide for the welfare of Iraqis -- which would, it seems, make U.S. troops and other foreigners fair game. Again, this comes from Iraqi leaders.
What the Iraqis want and what the members of the Bush regime claim that the Iraqis want or claim that the Iraqis need are quite different things. The discrepancy between the two only points to the fact that the Bush regime wants U.S. troops to remain in Iraq indefinitely so that the war profiteering in Iraq can continue indefinitely -- and in order to ensure that the "free" Iraqi government (you know, the Iraqi government installed at U.S. military gunpoint) is one that will kiss U.S. ass. The Bush regime wants a "free" Iraq, all right -- an Iraq in which U.S. corporations are free to rape, pillage and plunder and in which the U.S. military can freely intimidate other Middle Eastern nations with its presence.
Iraqis have not just the right, but the duty, to fight against that imperialism.
So, Donald, you're right, for once: We shouldn't call them "insurgents."
They are freedom fighters.
P.S. We'd call the "insurgents" "rebels," except that would only remind people that we are the Evil Empire.
7:04:03 PM 
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