Too much turkey: Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Defense Secretary of Torture Donald Rumsfeld had what he called an “epiphany” that led him to conclude that the homicide bombers and setters of roadside bombs in Iraq do not merit the lofty sobriquet “insurgent.” Rummy delivered this idiotic insight at a press conference at the Pentagon of Torture yesterday.

“This is a group of people who don’t merit the word `insurgency,’ I think,” Rumsfeld said. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“It was an epiphany.”

Rumsfeld’s comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.

“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,” he said. “These people don’t have a legitimate gripe.” Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.’ He promised to look it up.

An astute Associated Press reporter did look it up, and noted that Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines the term “insurgent” as “rising up against established authority.”

The excursion into lamebrained linguistics went even further when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, who also spoke at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term “insurgent.”

After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, “I have to use the word `insurgent’ because I can’t think of a better word right now.”

Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: “Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How’s that?”

ELIGs, huh? In a military-industrial establishment that loves acronyms, it might just catch on. Meanwhile, the men responsible for the continued loss of American and Iraqi lives quibble over semantics. Almost makes one want to “rise up against established authority” don’t it?