PAGING DR. ORWELL: AP reports

PAGING DR. ORWELL: AP reports that:

Secretary of State Colin Powell is assuring the Arab world the Bush administration’s demand for regime change in Iraq aims at disarmament, not ousting President Saddam Hussein.

“If he cooperates, then the basis of changed-regime policy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its policy to one of cooperation,” Powell said in an interview with a London-based Arab newspaper released Monday by the State Department.

Powell said the policy of regime change in Baghdad was inherited from the Clinton administration by the Bush administration.

Maybe that explains the Orwellian parsing of words here. Although I suspect this is simply Powell doing his usual role of good cop to Bush’s bad cop in the Middle East.

(With good and bad being relative, and often interchangeable terms, of course.)

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste recently had some comments on the enigma that is Powell.

(Incidentally, I linked to the above AP report because it showed up on my Yahoo home page. Now that Drudge has linked to the same article from the Washington Post, expect the usual hell to break loose.)