Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, today:

I will say this about Iran. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. And we know it.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, moments later:

PACE: The most recent reports have to do with individuals [from Iran] crossing the border into Iraq.

QUESTION: Do you believe it’s backed by the government or are they individual elements not backed by the central government?

PACE: I do not know.

Confused? All is answered below the fold: Read more

Alberto Gonzales, 12/8/05:

[W]ith respect to torture, the question is easy: We do not torture. The U.S. policy — not only is it policy, it is the law. We have a domestic law, domestic legal prohibition. We have an international prohibition against torture. … For this president, his position has been consistent all the way through with respect to torture. United States policy and our legal obligations are no torture.

Gonzales, today:

We do not render individuals where we believe it’s more likely than not that they will be tortured.

President Bush claims to support a woman’s right to an abortion in cases of rape, incest, or serious health risks. But today, for the second time in two weeks, Scott McClellan repeatedly refused to say whether Bush opposes South Dakota’s new abortion ban, which includes no explicit exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

McClellan justified his stonewall by saying the administration doesn’t comment on “state laws.” A partial excerpt:

MCCLELLAN: The state law, as you know, bans abortions in all instances with the exception of the life of the mother.

QUESTION: And not rape and incest. And so, therefore, he must disagree with it, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he, Scott?

MCCLELLAN: The president has a strong record of working to build a culture of life, and that’s what he will continue to do.

QUESTION: I know, but you’re not answering my question. You’re dodging it.

MCCLELLAN: No, I’m telling you that it’s a state law.

QUESTION: Is he opposed to abortion laws that forbid it for rape and incest; isn’t that true, Scott? That’s what you said.

MCCLELLAN: Let me respond. Look at the president’s record when it comes to defending the sanctity of life. It is a very strong record.

His views when it comes to pro-life issues are very clearly spelled out. We also have stated repeatedly that state legislatures, when they pass laws, those are state matters.

Actually, when it’s politically convenient, the Bush administration does give its opinion on state laws. An example:

QUESTION: Does the Bush administration still believe it’s wrong for Oregon and other parties to permit physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

This is a classic case of Bush trying to have it both ways. He wants to convince moderates that he’s opposed to the law without risking any backlash from his right-wing base.

The Congressional Budget Office on Friday “forecast a $371 billion shortfall for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, compared with the administration’s $423 billion “” a $52 billion gap. … For the third year, the administration has calculated that the annual deficit will come in higher than most public and private forecasters expect. … Observers in both parties say the White House projects a high deficit because, when the actual result turns out to be less, the administration can claim credit for stemming the red ink.”

In today’s “Best of the Web” column, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto seizes on a recent report from CNN. The key excerpt from CNN:

Prisoners from Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria, and other nations told tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent home.

Some detainees worry about reprisals from militants who will suspect them of cooperating with U.S. authorities in its war on terror…A man from Syria who was detained along with his father pleaded with the tribunal for help getting them political asylum–in any country that will take them.

“You’ve been saying ‘terrorists, terrorists.’ If we return, whether we did something or not, there’s no such things as human rights. We will be killed immediately,” he said. “You know this very well.”

Here’s Taranto’s take:

It may be that many of the Gitmo detainees are lucky to be there–and the self-styled do-gooders who are trying to get them out would condemn them to a much worse fate.

Taranto skips over the fact that they didn’t need to be in this situation. The Bush administration’s description of all Gitmo detainees as “the worst of the worst” — combined with its use of extreme interrogation techniques — has created serious problems, even for detainees the military determines are completely innocent.

A reasonable response might be to assist such individuals in finding political asylum elsewhere. For Taranto, apparently, there isn’t any information that can’t be twisted to justify the administration’s flawed approach to the war on terrorism.

Percentage of Americans who don’t have confidence in President Bush to improve the U.S. health care system, according to a new WSJ/Harris poll. 76 percent don’t believe he will be able to reduce out-of-pocket expenses for health insurance.

A children’s book “about two male penguins who raise a baby penguin” has been removed from the kid’s section of two public libraries after complaints it had “homosexual undertones.” The book is “based on a true story of two male penguins, named Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City’s Central Park Zoo in the late 1990s.”

The upcoming New Orleans mayoral primary faces logistical problems because “tens of thousands of evacuees are still scattered across the country and eligible to cast ballots in the April 22 election, either by mail or at satellite polling places around the state.”

An estimated 75 percent of the New Orleans Parish’s displaced voters are African-American, and serious questions remain about how African-American voters will be adequately represented in the primary.

The NAACP estimates that “66 percent of those displaced are outside of Louisiana,” but a federal judge last month refused to “order Louisiana officials to provide out-of-state satellite polling places for displaced voters” in the primary. Instead, over 700,000 former city residents will receive “information packets” about how to vote by absentee ballot. (Worse, the address the city has on file may be unreliable.)

In response, local leaders have wondered why Iraqis living in the U.S. were given this right, yet African-Americans are not. “[Louisiana] had all kinds of excuses why that couldn’t happen,” New Orleans City Council President Oliver M. Thomas Jr. said. “But the Iraqi people voted [at satellite offices]. Why can’t we do that for all of our voters?”

The media continues to report that the South Dakota abortion ban contains “no exception for cases of rape or incest.”

But reporters evidently missed the comments of South Dakota State Rep. Roger Hunt (R), the main sponsor of the legislation, who said he carved “a little gray area” into the bill to allow for abortions in cases of rape or incest. TIME reports:

In other words, a woman presenting herself to an emergency room immediately after a rape, Hunt says, would be able to use emergency contraception; the trick is that she has to do within the first few days after the assault, before any test can determine whether she was pregnant in the first place. The lawmakers concluded that it’s OK for a rape victim to have an abortion, so long as she doesn’t know for certain that she’s doing it.

Additionally, as Digby pointed out, State Rep. Bill Napoli (R) said on PBS Newshour that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. Napoli outlined one such scenario:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Therefore, according to lawmakers in South Dakota, you can have an abortion after rape or incest…but only if you are a virgin, religious, brutally sodomized, and not entirely sure whether the rapist or family member actually impregnated you.