The best and nerdiest aspect of yesterday's Tim Howard mania was arguably the (brief) vandalism of Wikipedia's Department of Defense page. Inspired by America's goalkeeper and his record 16 saves, some wag altered it, removed the name of Chuck Hagel, and inserted a picture of a post-save Howard.

It took less than 24 hours for the actual DOD to embrace the meme.

That's a picture of Hagel calling Howard, with the official DOD caption: "Tim Howard was named 'Secretary of Defense of the United States of America' for record breaking amount of saves in the U.S. match against the Belgium."

Enjoy this, before the inevitable mushrooming of conservative op-eds making hay of our DOD congratulating a guy whose team lost as America panics anew about losses in Iraq.