corrente

So, now that Condi-lie-zza is going to take over Colin's duties up at the big house, who's going to get her position as National Security advisor? Why, Stephen Hadley—the guy who, um, accidentally slipped the famous 18 words lie into Bush's SOTU (see here)

You know, if your child fails a test under Bush's No Child Left Behind act, they get held back, thrown to the lions, branded, tortured—whatever the wingers have decided is an adequate incentive.

But Hadley failed a huge test, too: He put an obvious untruth into a Bush State of the Union Speech, and got caught.

Hadley failed his test, and should be held back. Instead, he's promoted! Go figure.

UPDATE Robert Scheer writes in the LA Times:

In fact, despite calls for their resignations — from the former head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, among others — the neocon gang is thriving. They have not been held responsible for the "16 words" about yellowcake, the rise and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the post-invasion looting of Iraq's munitions stores and the disastrous elimination of the Iraqi armed forces.

As of today, the neocons on Zinni's list of losers — Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — are all still employed even as Bush's new director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, is eviscerating the CIA's leadership.

We should remember that as flawed as its performance was under former Director George J. Tenet, the CIA at least sometimes tried to be a counterweight to the fraudulent claims of Rumsfeld's and Dick Cheney's neoconservative staffs. All of the nation's traditional intelligence centers were bypassed by a rogue operation based in Feith's Office of Special Plans. Feith was given broad access to raw intelligence streams — the better to cherry-pick factoids and fabrications that found their way into even the president's crucial prewar State of the Union address.

Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy into the administration's ideological fantasies of remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives have consolidated control of the United States' vast military power.

With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell — instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld — the coup of the neoconservatives is complete. They have achieved a remarkable political victory by failing upward.
(LA Times)

That damn theme from Looney Tunes just keeps going through my head... Unfortunately, "Tha-a-a-t's all, folks!" doesn't come. The theme just keeps repeating....