I like to think that a guy whose been in Congress for 15 years is only acting like a dumbass, naive hick because he's trying to downplay an embarrassing situation but  John Doolittle's (R-CA) recent interview with the Sacremento Bee suggests he intends to compete with Doug Feith for the title of "stupidest fucking guy on the face of the planet". 

UK Secretary of Defence, John Reid, talks around the problem of Rumsfeld's Paradox:

Troops, he will say, are now operating on an "uneven playing field of scrutiny", where the forces' actions are analysed down to the "level of the single private soldier", while the enemy "refuses any scrutiny at all and endeavours to exploit our highly prized free media against us".

Rumsfeld's Paradox is as follows:  When one is trying to prevent all bad news from Iraq coming out, one cannot put on display the inhumanity of one's opponents without making it appear like the mission isn't being completed.  Thus, it seems like all bad acts are coming from American soldiers.  Its time for Bush to admit the mission is a mess.  If he really wants to stay the course, his best course of action is to admit that things are bad and lay out the inhumanity of those who attack our soldiers and Iraqis.  Don't bet on it.

I once had the opportunity to share some beers for about half an hour with someone who had spent a significant amount of time with Cheney.  The person was famous, and the revelation of the name would damage him or her professionally.  The person, who was somewhat sympathetic to the Administration was very clear about their opinion of Cheney.   "He's a maniac," I was told.  Its no suprise then, to read Newsweeks lengthy dissection of the VP:

Has Cheney changed? Has he been transformed, warped, perhaps corrupted—by stress, wealth, aging, illness, the real terrors of the world or possibly some inner goblins? The few who know him (and few really do) aren't saying much, except to argue that he takes a longer view than the mean politics of the moment. But there is no doubt that Cheney has become less amiable, less open, less willing to conciliate and seek common ground than he was as a younger politician. A man who was shepherded by the Secret Service to his bunker during 9/11 has stayed there—even when that has not been helpful to the president.

Even more frightening is Cheney's willingness to lie:

Cheney testified to the 9/11 Commission that he spoke with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that appeared headed toward Washington. (The plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a brave revolt by the passengers.) But a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events.

A draft of the report conveyed their skepticism. But when top White House officials, including chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, reviewed the draft, they became extremely agitated. After a prolonged battle, the report was toned down. The factual narrative, closely read, offers no evidence that Cheney sought initial authorization from the president. The point is not a small one. Legally, Cheney was required to get permission from his commander in chief, who was traveling (but reachable) at the time. If the public ever found out that Cheney gave the order on his own, it would have strongly fed the view that he was the real power behind the throne.

  One heartbeat away.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Donald Rumsfeld apparently doesn't even use e-mail so obviously he knows what he's talking about.

Iraq is worse off than when we showed up:

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, told the Senate budget committee that production of crude oil and electricity was down from three years ago. Attacks had also hit oil exports.

Ms Rice initially asserted that “many more Iraqis” were now getting potable water and sewerage services. However, under intense questioning from Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, she conceded that although “capacity” had increased, fewer Iraqis were actually receiving those services.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, told a separate House budget hearing on Thursday that political and economic progress was being made. “For the most part, the country is functioning,” he said. It was not “a pretty picture”, but not everything was horrible. “We’re not there to do nation-building. It’s going to be an Iraqi solution ultimately,” he said.

People wonder why Bush is at 40%?  When does the media finally just call him an idiot?

Yes, the world's only superpower, the richest nation on Earth with a $12 trillion economy, a national budget of $2.8 trillion, a Defense Department budget of roughly $500 billion, a White House PR budget in the billions and the home to the largest commercial advertising industry in the world is in the words of the great sage, Donald Rumsfeld, totally unable to match the public relations abilities of a relatively small loosely constituted transnational terrorist organization. 

Update (2/17/06):  Is the solution to most of the Bush administration's foreign policy problems really better PR?  Didn't anyone go talk to Don Rumsfeld before the war and tell him invading an Arab country in the heart of the Middle East might be something of a tough sell to most of the people in that region?  Of the people Bush would most likely pick to solve this problem, who would be the most ineffective: Condi Rice or our minister of public diplomacy, Karen Hughes?

Harry's fine; its poor Dick Cheney and his family we should worry about.

I don't know what it is about this deal that makes me wonder if a certain administration needed to scratch the back of a friendly Middle Eastern government that hosts US military support facilities for the Iraq War in a region of the world where the United States and its foreign policy really aren't all that popular and made it known that it wanted the deal to go through?  Then again, when in doubt never leave out the possibility that the deal was approved by John Snow's Treasury department due to complete ignorance, incompetence or negligence.

I'm a huge fan of Knight-Ritter--they are doing the best reporting out there right now.  But this report about an Iraqi city has serious problems with it:

The 2nd platoon and two others - about 120 men total - are based at the Alamo and at another base on the edge of town. They replaced three companies from the 3rd Infantry Division that had a total of more than 400 soldiers.

Reading the transcript of Vice President Cheney's interview with Fox News, I was reminded of my days playing town-team amateur baseball and watching one of our old-timers stand at the plate and taunt the pitcher yelling, "Throw that pumpkin in here 'cause I'm gonna blast it!"   Christ, couldn't the White House just save time and have McClellan or Matalin interview him or something?  Most people go to Larry King when they screw up and want the softball treatment but evidently leading Republican politicos go on Fox instead.

Kevin Drum provides some interesting observations on the interview including the VP's implying that he didn't report it sooner because his credibility is so godawful no one would believe anything he said, outside maybe Brit Hume?    I personally like the part where Cheney says he saw Harry Whittington but then he didn't see him...until he shot him.  Hmmmm? 

From Editor and Publisher.

Apparently, the man Cheney shot had a heart attack.  More when we get it folks.

From Nedra Pickler's AP report on Cheney's got a gun: 

Both the sheriff's department and the state have determined that alcohol did not appear to be a factor.

That sentence is conspicuous for what it does not say.  I ask you, Mr. McClellan, was the Vice President drinking on Saturday?

Also, you can see that they make use of the latest open-source intelligence, mainly Google maps. In one part of the video, the plotters are shown poring over printouts of the neighborhood, marking routes of access. They look exactly like Google maps. The maps are also later used to show the planned points of attack.

Rob Courdry joined in.

Courdry: "Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time-there-were-quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be the 78 year old man. Even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists-he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.

Whittington is an allegory.  When real life uses fictional devices to get its point across, you know things are messed up.

We find out that Scotty McClellan's most important job is that of First responder:

Q Scott, do you think that the shooting accident involving the Vice President on Saturday should have been disclosed to the public on Saturday?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I, personally, was informed by the Situation Room that there had been a hunting accident, and that is was a member of the Vice President's hunting party. But I didn't have additional information other than that at this point.

"Squad 51 . . ."

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that the first priority was making sure that Harry Whittington, Mr. Whittington was getting the medical care that he needed, and I think that's where everybody's attention should have been focused and was focused when the hunting accident took place.

And it's important always to work to make sure you get information out like this as quickly as possible, but it's also important to make sure that the first priority is focused where it should be, and that is making sure that Mr. Whittington has the care that he needs.

MR. McCLELLAN: So there is some different circumstances. And the other circumstance here was that someone was injured and needed medical care. And the Vice President's team was making sure he was getting taken care of and that he got to the hospital and received additional treatment.

Good to see that Scottie's first priority was getting medical care for the wounded, not doing his own job.

Polling data shows that the American people utterly overestimate the threat that Iranian nuclear weapons pose:

Fifty-nine percent thought Iran would use nuclear weapons against the United States, and 80 percent thought the Iranians would hand them over to terrorists to use against the United States.  More thought Iran would use the weapons against Israel -- 77 percent -- and about as many -- 81 percent -- thought Iran would give them to terrorists who wanted to use them against Israel.

I do believe that a nuclear-armed Iran is not in the best interests of the United States or the world.  However, its incredibly unrealistic to think that there is a 51% chance that Iran will use nuclear weapons against the United States.  We have enough striking power to take out the country--utterly.  They'd be fools to do so.  They are rational, if misguided actors.  We should stop them from building a bomb if we can, but this is ridiculous.

Check out this quote from the Volokh Conspiracy (via Kevin Drum) and take a guess who said it.  I'll give you a hint that he's been in the news the last couple months but I guarantee you'll be surprised by the answer and the chutzpah of it all.

Okay, everyone know Vice-President Cheney accidentally shot someone in his hunting party over the weekend which doesn't look great on the evening news, but Josh Marshall points to another embarrassment; the effort by friends and supporters of Mr. Cheney to downplay the injuries of the man he shot.    Eyewitnesses would have you believe that Cheney's shotgun blast barely "broke the skin" of Mr. Whittington, yet Mr. Whittington's injuries are so minor that somehow he's still in an intensive care unit two days later? 

These people really need to put their energy into something else because covering Dick Cheney's ass at this point in his political career is definitely a lost cause.