The President's Department of Missile Defense Misinformation Redundancy Department

As Dan Froomkin asks, WHICH is true on missile defense?

Former assistant secretary of defense Philip E. Coyle , writing on NiemanWatchdog.org, traces Bush's recent and inconsistent answers about missile defense in the wake of North Korea's rocket launches.

Which is true?

A) Here's Bush with CNN's Larry King on Thursday: "If it headed to the United States, we've got a missile defense system that will defend our country."

B) Here's Bush at his Chicago press conference on Thursday: "Our missile systems are modest, our anti-ballistic missile systems are modest. They're new. It's new research. We've gotten -- testing them. And so I can't -- it's hard for me to give you a probability of success."

C) And here he is a few moments later at the same press conference: "Yes, I think we had a reasonable chance of shooting it down. At least that's what the military commanders told me."

The answer, Coyle writes, is of course D) "The ground-based system hasn't had a successful flight intercept test in four years. In the two most recent attempts, the interceptor never got off the ground and failed to leave its silo. And in the only other recent attempt, the kill vehicle - the pointy-end of the interceptor - failed to separate from its booster and missed its target."