But not without moaning about how hard he slaved in ordering a form letter written–no, wait, he wrote the original form letter himself! (yeah, right) and how he laboriously told someone to use the printing machine:

“I wrote and approved the now more than 1,000 letters sent to family members and next of kin of each of the servicemen and women killed in military action. While I have not individually signed each one, in the interest of ensuring expeditious contact with grieving family members, I have directed that in the future I sign each letter.”

“Ensuring expeditious contact”? What the hell is that? To make certain contact will be made promptly? In the context of this situation, that makes no sense whatsoever–his signing the letters will not speed up the process. The reason he says this is to avoid openly stating the real reason he’s starting to sign the letters: so he can make it appear that he gives a good goddamn about the fallen soldiers when he actually does not. This is about expressing true regret, not speed. It’s about expressing the minimum possible amount of human warmth and caring, which Rumsfeld seems incapable of truly expressing.

And by the way, the number is 1,304. He could at least know the number of fallen soldiers to the nearest three hundred.