OK. OK. That's not quite what Rummy said. Rather he used the following argument to support his otherwise fantastical view that what's going on in Iraq is not a civil war (see here):
So there's a number of good things happening. There are four provinces in the country where almost all the violence is occurring, and there are 14 where there is relatively little violence. And so, amidst all of this difficulty, the currency is fairly stable, the schools are open, the hospitals are open, the people are functioning.
If we generalize this line of reasoning in order to come up with a 'continuum of civil warnality' --a la Dershowitz's recent 'contribution' to the debate about the un-war between Israel and Lebanon (see here)--it would look something like this:
A battle between fighting factions composed of members of the same nation does not count as a civil war if the fighting only occurs in 1/4 of the nation's regions and if schools, hospitals, and banks are open in most areas.
Now when we input the salient information from the supposed U.S. Civil War--e.g., 40% of the fighting occurred in Tennessee and Virginia (see here for a helpful map)--we quickly see that one of the biggest lies ever fed to the American people--bigger in fact than the claim that Iraq posed a threat in 2003--is that America experienced a civil war from 1861 to 1865. See, when you live in Rummy's fantasy world--black is white, defeat is victory, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. Perhaps when he finally gets kicked out of the Pentagon, he can send his resume to INGSOC (or more likely, Halliburton).
Rummy is as detached from reality as he is evil, uncaring, cocky, and dangerous. That Bush has yet to fire him is evidence of his own incompetence. History will show that Bush and his cronies have done more damage to both this country and the world than any group of cronies in American history--and that's saying something impressive indeed.
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