US Secretary of Defense officially handed in his resignation today from the Pentagon's internal scrabble club, where he has been treasurer for five years.

"I cannot continue to be a member of an organization that has such different values to mine," He said. "Scrabble was once a beautiful game, but now it is open to countless violations of the rule book, with few people left to uphold its traditions and standards. I particularly am disgusted by an over use of the dictionary and a prevalence of two and three letter words which no one knows what they mean. I have also witnessed during my time in office an increasing use of proper nouns, which is completely unacceptable."

The chairperson of the Pentagon scrabble club, Sonya McLellan, expressed regret at Rumsfeld resignation but stated that she was not surprised. "In recent months I have seen a growing gulf between Rummy's values and those of the majority of the club's members. A lot of new people have joined, and they bring changes, and I guess that does upset some people."

An Apology

We at Brainsnap apologise for the recent article entitled "Rumsfeld Quits'. We were slightly hasty in declaring that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned his position of Secretary of Defense, though we stand by our report on his dispute with the president over a scrabble game. This latter point, we feel, has been vindicated by Rumsfeld's actions today.

However, we accept that we have been slightly lapse in our journalistic procedures. Our fact checkers allowed an obvious error to be published, and we are deeply sorry to all those who may have been unintentionally misled, especially to those who threw street parties at great expense to celebrate Rumsfeld's political demise. We understand that there were a lot of you and we are prepared to reimburse part of your expenses if you contact us and provide proofs of purchase.

Once more we sincerely apologise for our error. An investigation has been undertaken to identify where problems lie in Brainsnap's fact checking department, and a number of low level employees have regretfully ended their time with us. Comrade Byron also has been reprimanded for his part in this unfortunate incident.