Uncle Rummy’s Magic Words

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

Hey kids, your ever-lovin’ Uncle Donny Rummy has come up with a neat idea to get you out of trouble next time your parents catch you telling a whopper! Let’s say you told them that the car fender got smashed by fleeing bank robbers who sideswiped you at 90 miles an hour when you were on your way to buy Grandma a birthday card, and then they find out that you actually rammed the car into your ex-girlfriend’s motorcycle in a fit of drunken rage when you saw it parked in front of your buddy Pete’s place. Happens all the time, right? But then the ‘rents come down heavy, all "you shouldn’t lie, lying is wrong, it corrupts your character, yadda freaking yadda yadda boo, whatever." Now you don’t have to take all that morality and corruption crap. Just do what Uncle Rummy does when he gets caught with his pants on fire: shrug your shoulders and say, "I didn’t lie; I just ‘mis-stated the facts.’"

Easy, huh? And here’s the beauty part: it really works! You can get away with it! Uncle Rummy does – every time! He just trots out that line, and all the big-time reporters nod their heads and say, "Oh, OK then." So next time you’re nicked for saying that the cat’s neck got caught in the refrigerator door when you actually strangled the mangy fur-ball for looking at you funny, or when they find out you actually haven’t ended that program of planting paid propaganda in illegally conquered countries to make your war crime look better and, not incidentally, infiltrate your phoney baloney back to the homeland because you know it will be picked up by domestic news services, thus deliberately and cynically subverting the very clear laws against using propaganda and "psy ops" against the American people, just remember your good old Uncle Donny Rummy and his magic words!

Rumsfeld says ‘misstated’ facts on planted Iraq news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday he was mistaken when he stated last week that the U.S. military had stopped paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles.

Rumsfeld had said in a television interview on Friday that the U.S. military had ceased paying to place positive stories in Iraqi media after criticism in the U.S. Congress and press. Rumsfeld made similar comments the same day to the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military command in Iraq was still paying to plant positive stories, even as U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk investigates it.