In putting this column together I check numerous Web sites each morning, starting with lefty-info repositories like www.commondreams.org, www.guardian.co.uk, www.workingforchange.com, www.motherjones.com, and www.thenation.com. I especially like Common Dreams' site because it features copious reprints from the British press, and for some reason even the Fleet Street tabloids tend not to suck as bad as our newspapers do.

CNN's site (www.cnn.com) is good because it offers tons of transcripts from talk shows and press conferences. But the Pentagon's official online source of spin, www.defenselink.mil, is probably my favorite. Surfing it is like getting inside the Man's mind, which is pretty cool. Pretty scary, too, given the kind of stuff our key war-makers are talking openly about these days.

For your edification, here are a few gems I've come across while getting my surf on.

Keeping it real Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: I do not think of us as the world's policemen at all.... We do not do police work in the United States. We do not do police work in other countries except on very rare occasions as we go in and then the task evolves from a military one to a peacekeeping one, at which point we try to move our forces out.

From a March 6 press briefing, transcript courtesy of www.defenselink.mil

The new humanitarians

Q: How – how many were captured in the fighting?

Air Force Brigadier General John Rosa: I can't tell you. It's less than 20.

Q: How many killed? Any idea?

Rosa: Several hundred, Ivan. But again, we're not characterizing it as numbers.

From a March 12 press briefing, transcript courtesy of www.defenselink.mil

The new humanitarians, part two

Q: We're continuing to go after the cave and tunnel complexes, how do we know who's in the caves that we're trying to seal up in these hits? How do we know who's there?

Rumsfeld: (pause) Well. We don't. And the people who hide in caves, it seems to me, for the most part are people we would prefer not to be hiding in caves. But you can't know of certain knowledge who's in a cave unless you crawl in there to find them. And what we're doing is we're helping them, by closing up the entrances to caves so that they can't be used. And that will reduce the problem.

From a Nov. 30, 2001, press briefing, transcript courtesy of www.defenselink.mil

Uh, could you please spell out whose side you're on? President George W. Bush: We're concerned about the Middle East ... because it's affecting the lives of the Palestinians and our friends the Israelis.

From a March 13 press conference, transcript courtesy of CNN