I'm days and days behind on my reading (but I've got two shiny new hardwood floors to brag on!) but this WaPo piece felt like disinformation to me. This part made me laugh out loud:

"Dick was always very realistic," said Kenneth L. Adelman, the Reagan administration arms-control official who has known Cheney for more than three decades. "I don't really understand how month after month he gets briefings showing Iraq's getting worse and worse, and he engages in all this happy talk. Bush has become more realistic. Certainly [Defense Secretary Robert M.] Gates is more realistic, so the happy talk from the Pentagon is over. Yet Cheney is still stuck in the mold."

Of course he's happy- how many billions are flowing into Iraq, still, with barely anything like 'oversight' or 'competitive bidding?' Let's not kid ourselves, this war is making Cheney and his KBR buddies richer than Croesus, and so long as that's true, Dick will be a happy man. But it also got me thinking: given that the "Bomb Iran" talk is ratcheting up, and not dying down, how likely is it that this article is a correct appraisal, and we should understand that Cheney's power is waning?

And if it is true, what does that mean about the Iran talk? That it's all coming from Chimpy himself? Word is that Condasleeza is actually not a bloodthirsty warmonger at heart, and that only her incompetence prevents her from balancing the crazies on hotspot issues like the Norks and the Iranians. But it's a scary thought, no? George W. "God's Own Uniting Decider" Chimeror picking up the slack and being his own puppet. The thought that he's got two chips on his shoulder- one to best Daddy and one to show Cheney how a Pretzeldent acts in war- leaves me very spooked indeed.