I had the singular misfortune of catching a little bit of "Meet the Press" this morning, which featured an ever-more-pathetic Colin Powell trying to fib his way around a series of pointed questions from the two Georges (Stephanopolis and Will - talk about your odd couple!) about the growing consensus that the case the President and his advisors made for our splendid little war in Iraq was based entirely on misdirection and falsehoods. Whatever ex post facto justification you want to offer for the toppling of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, the fact of the matter remains that George Bush and his Pentagon cabal used the specter of 9/11 to scare the American people into backing a war that should not have happened, and almost certainly would not have happened, had the voting public been better informed as to what kind of threat Iraq in truth posed to the United States and how nonexistent Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and links to international terrorist organizations actually were, we wouldn't be trapped in this Middle Eastern Kobayashi Maru that we are now and likely will be for years to come.

(Bonus points if you got the Wrath of Khan reference above!)

I believe it was Joshua Micah Marshall who compared Bush and Company to an Enron-style corporation experiencing its first real margin call. It's an apt metaphor - for years now this administration has been able to get away with absolutely insanity in terms of its foreign and domestic policies by simply saying "Trust us." But trust is a kind of credit, and you can only go so far on it until reality exposes you for what you are.

The clock is ticking, Dubya. I hope you know where your golden parachute is...