The Adminstration That Couldn't Shoot Straight

"He was one of those incredibly stupid, energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, no invention, just a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot luck to pull him through."
H.G. Wells "A Dream of Armageddon"

This is the day the U.S. raided the office of the Iraqi exile they paid $27 million to, who told them they would easily find the weapons of mass destruction, that Iraqis would welcome American occupation with flowers and the oil wells would more than pay for reconstruction.

This is the day they had to release their Portland, OR suspect (AKA material witness) in the Spanish terrorist bombing, when the fingerprints they used to finger him turned out to be of the fingers of somebody else in, uhn, Algeria.

This is the day that their faux news commercials for the prescription drug cards that seniors hate because they are impossible to use, was declared illegal.

This is the day after the charge that the terrorists they said they bombed in Baghdad were actually a wedding party, and that they killed 40 people including children. This may turn out to be not true, but isn't it interesting that no one can say it's even unlikely, that the charge sounds credible?

The worry we've had is that the Bushies are screwing up so badly that any small suggestion of success will look like a breakthrough. Just by the law of averages something would seem to have to go right for them. So this continuing, not-very-slow motion collapse into chaos is becoming downright scary.


Two notes you saw here first that have since made the national press: Teresa Heinz Kerry is being touted as the secret weapon that could guarantee Pennsylvania for Kerry, and that there are now questions about prisoner treatment at Guantanamo.

One additional note to the prisoner abuse scandal, which also gets worse everyday. Some other psychologists have chimed in to suggest that the current screenfuls of so-called "reality TV", featuring large doses of people being humiliated in various disgusting ways, has encouraged folks to think abusing Arabs is a fun thing to do. We find this a hard one to dismiss. It rings true.