Below is a letter to the Anchorage Daily News. Tmesis may be over the top, but I couldn’t resist. After all, I really was dumbfounded. It’s a word I picked up from the NYT crossword. I once heard a previous editor of the puzzle (Eugene Maleska?) say that a good crossword is both entertaining and instructive. It’s a standard which I also find applicable in judging novels, movies, and other works of “art”. I apologize if there’s little entertainment in the following piece. As always, comments are welcome.
I would include Thomas’s column, but I didn’t find it online, and my typing skills prohibit such a major undertaking. Reading it was bad enough. I think you’ll get the drift. What I did discover is that Thomas is "the most widely syndicated op-ed columnist in the country, appearing in 540 newspapers."

Thanks to Phil for the link to the Cal Thomas column:
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20061026tq--b-a.txt&catid=1117&code=tq--b

I was at a loss for words to describe my amazement at the column in Thursday’s opinion section by Cal Thomas, so I had to make one up. You can look up tmesis, right under Tlingit, and fill in the blank.)

To include “Rumsfeld” and “1984” in the same headline does more than evoke Orwellian images. Is Thomas so smitten with his master that he failed to do some basic homework? Or does he really think his selective view of history will go unnoticed by the reading public?
The Defense Secretary had invited “a small group of columnists” to lunch to discuss a speech he gave in October 1984. Thomas quotes him as saying that terrorism is “state-sponsored, by nations using it as a central element of their foreign policy.”

The brutal war between Iraq and Iran was in full swing, and the Reagan administration was desperate that Iran didn’t win it. Reagan had removed Iraq from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and he was working to re-establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq, which had been severed following the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in 1967. A key role in this effort was played by President Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld.

By the summer of 1983 there was already overwhelming evidence that Iraq was using chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve gas against the Iranians. The U.S. government felt compelled to issue a denunciation of the attacks. After all, the Geneva Conventions do not look kindly on states that traffic in chemical weapons, or CW.

Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984. Earlier in the month, the State Department had issued a statement saying, “Available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.” The details of Rumsfeld’s visit were revealed in December 2003, in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. They include a cable sent to Rumsfeld by then-Secretary of State George Schultz. In the cable, Rumsfeld was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement “was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs.” It was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire “to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq’s choosing” was “undiminished”. “This message bears reinforcing during your discussions.”

The Washington Post reported in December 2003:
“Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.
“Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad [the first was in December 1983], to improve relations with Hussein.”
Twenty-four of the largest American corporations profited from the arms sales, and Iraqi scientists were invited to symposiums in California and New Mexico on nuclear weapons technology. The names of the companies, and their dealings, were included in Iraq’s report to the U.N. in December 2002, in the 8000 pages that Bush tried to expunge.
In short, while making speeches on the threat of global terrorism, Rumsfeld was doing his best to assist Saddam Hussein in obtaining “WMD”. We can also conclude that Rumsfeld had no more compunction about flouting the Geneva Conventions in 1984 than he does in 2006.
Another acolyte of the Prophet Donald, Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended the luncheon. A few days earlier, Pace had paid homage to his boss: “He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country.” It would all be comical were the issues (Iraq, separation of church and state, etc.) not so serious.