ome random Monday morning thoughts. By this evening every late-night comic will be parodying the Vice President on his latest hunting saga. It appears the victim of Dick Cheney's misadventure (they'd never admit that he was a poor shot), the prominent Austin, Texas, attorney, Harry Whittington is in stable condition being treated for head injuries. If the event had not been reported on the Corpus Christi Caller website, I wonder when the news would have leaked out that Mr. Cheney had shot a fellow hunter. As it is, it was nearly a full day before we learned of the hunting accident. The VP travels with a doctor and other aides who obviously made it possible for the victim to get good and immediate medical attention. But I wonder, what feeble excuse will they conjure up for the delay in revealing the events?
 
Weirdest headline comes from a story in  section one of the New York Times a couple of days ago. Sadly, it involves the death of a prominent and successful furrier on Long Island, New York.  The event occurred back in January of 2001 and at last the jury will soon begin deciding the case. The victim, Jerry Colaitis, it appears, injured his neck while dodging a shrimp flung at him by a Benihana chef. After the dinner he complained of a pain the neck, which lead to surgeries, which ended with his demise at the age of 46. The headline read, "Jury to Decide if Flying Sizzling Shrimp Led to Man's Death". Tasteless or not, it sure made me read the story.
 
The man I would relish the opportunity to interview, Paul Pillar . He was the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year. In the forthcoming edition of the journal of Foreign Affairs this experienced and respected public servant claims that the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq - until a year after the invasion! He claims that, even then, the intelligence community did the analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided country ripe for civil war. Mr. Pillar believes that the administration selected, randomly, intelligence to support a decision to invade Iraq, that had already been made.
Here's a sad quote from the lead editorial in the New York Times this Sunday, "When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar lead the effort which concluded, in August 2004, that Iraq was on the brink of disaster." We know what happened thereafter; officials leaked Mr. Pillar's authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to the Washington Times. The idea being that Paul Pillar couldn't be trusted because he was a voice of dissent from the party line. He no longer has a job... of course.
 
It appears that the vast majority of the detainees at Gitmo are neither members of Al Qaeda, nor fighters who were captured on the Afghanistan battlefield. Of all the hundreds held, only 10 prisoners have been charged with terrorism. It took three years for any hearings to be held.
 
Has any president turned to the American public with the frequency of George W. Bush to say, in effect, "just trust me"?
I wish I could.
Now back to the Winter Olympics in Turin.
More later,