Now he tells us -

Secretary of State Colin Powell is hedging on his "bulletproof" evidence of Saddam's WMDs that he used to sucker the gullible Left and temporarily bamboozle the United Nations into looking the other way while his bosses George and Dick got their war on, according to an article in today's BBC World News. While he's still claiming that the bogus information he offered up last year was considered reliable at the time, Powell is clearly distancing himself from it now, pinning the blame on "faulty intelligence", i.e. the CIA.

Never mind that this evidence was in fact either cherry-picked by Donald Rumsfeld - who you may remember had created his own special intelligence agency in order to circumvent the conventional spooks' naysaying on the necessity of an Iraqi war - or spoon-fed to the Bushies by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, a group of admitted liars and opportunists who would have said anything to be restored back to power in Baghdad. The CIA, before one of the voices of caution against the Bush Administration's imperial ventures in the Middle East, is now being set up as the fall guy, just in case the growing public outrage about this "War on Terror" fails to subside in time for the November elections.

Would that this were a sign of Colin Powell's impending defection, a la Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke, instead! If Powell were to flip on the Bushies, it would almost certainly mean the end of their mal-administration; but I guess that's a lot of wishful thinking on my part. Speaking of wishful thinking, John McCain continues to tantalize the Democratic faithful with sound-bites that seem to signal a willingness to at least entertain the idea of being Kerry's running mate. Like any good American, Senator McCain is downright horrified by the actions of the White House's current occupants and the enabling toadiness of his own party, which has betrayed virtually every conservative ideal since the 2000 Election, when the supposed inviolability of States' rights was tossed aside for the sake of attaining power.

What's keeping Bush and Cheney (or shall I say Cheney and Bush? If there were actually any Americans left who were foolish enough to believe that Dick wasn't the Gepetto to Dubya's Pinocchio, this week's announcement that the two would be appearing together before the 9/11 Commission should lay to permanent rest the myth of Bush's hidden genius. He's the idiot we all said he was, folks - pure and simple - so much so that Cheney doesn't trust him to keep his story straight without his prompting) in power right now is a wall of silence being maintained by conservatives and the GOP rank-and-file, clearly against the better judgment of many of them. Already cracks have appeared in this wall; it remains to be seen how many more it will take the bring it all tumbling down, but as time goes on I am increasingly optimistic that it will happen.