Rumsfeld slips

... and, apparently inadvertently, tells the truth.

Not to worry, I'm sure it won't happen again. Or at least, not any time soon.

It's like one of those cop shows. The guy bein' questioned is talking a great game; he's got his story down.

Then the officer asks an innocuous question, he lets something slip...

And the cuffs go on.

See Rummy, that's how the truth is. Some of the guys like your crew, who've been lying so long you barely know what's real any more, you can get so far from it, you almost forget it's there.

But fool yourself as far and as long and as much as you like, a part of you still knows it's there anyway. And sooner or later, it's gonna slip out.

See, I've said this before, I'll say it again: that's the kicker right there.

They never had any evidence.

It ain't the Hussein didn't necessarily have weapons--and here's the one thing I actually agree with Rumsfeld about: I also suspect they'll find something or other, eventually. It seems a bit too unlike Hussein that there wasn't something up his sleeves somewhere.

But that, at this point, just isn't the point.

The point is people: yet again, we know this:

They lied.

Because they didn't say 'we think he might have them'. They didn't say 'he might have something somewhere.'

They said, and I quote:

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

That would be Dick Cheney speaking, back there.

That would make him a liar.

Now you might be thinking oh, maybe he was deceived. Maybe he had bad sources.

I have two words for that theory:

Bull. Shit.

Cheney, Bush and company have consistently demonstrated their willingness to stretch the truth until it screams for mercy. And every time they stretched it, they stretched it in the same direction. We now know how they massaged the aluminum tubes evidence, we know perfectly well how they treated intelligence sources who refused to say what they wanted the public to hear--up to and including exposing an undercover field agent, potentially endangering her life.

Cheney and the rest of the Pathologicals (their gang name, I hear) were not deceived, unless, perhaps, as some of the best cons often do, they also managed to deceive themselves in the course of lying to you.

Sure, Mr. Code name 'Curveball' told them some whoppers. This gives them exactly no bloody excuse. They knew he was unreliable.

What he gave them wasn't evidence. What he gave them was an excuse.

A ridiculously thin excuse, too. I mean, a drunk guy shows up with a wild story about mobile biological weapons labs... you write it all down...

And then you take it to the UN?

Riiiiiight.

Cheney has begun debating this eve. I'm gonna give a little tip, help you out here, in separating fact from fiction: you can always tell when Cheney's lying.

It's when his lips are moving.