Donald Rumsfeld seems to have left a permanent rhetorical device behind him at the Pentagon. Call it the exculpative self-interrogatory. Here’s Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, answering charges that Bush’s war planes slaughtered some 40 wedding guests in the Western Iraqi desert four years ago:

And, in an email responding to questions from a New York Times reporter, General Kimmitt later offered what was, by U.S. military standards, little short of an admission: “Could there have been a celebration of some type going on?... Certainly. Bad guys have celebrations. Could this have been a meeting among the foreign fighters and smugglers? That is a possibility. Could it have involved entertainment? Sure. However, a wedding party in a remote section of the desert along one of the rat lines, held in the early morning hours strains credulity.”