An obvious question that seeks a logical

responce. After all that this country went through with Nixon's fiasco, WHY would any politican leave incriminating evidence around, why would they not cover their arse, why would they lie when they get caught? I find it nuts that Cheney had a piece of paper with Joe Wilson's name on it. Are they stupid or arrogant?

And they might be right, at least on a large scale with the nation as a whole. Remember the missile gap we heard so much about when the Soviets were still a going concern? We had to pump money into the military, we had to build up because we'd fallen so far behind in a number of ways. When the Soviets fell it turns out that the gap was garbage and the official estimate was closer, though that had been overstated as well. Many wouldn't have even fired, the seals in the silos leaked and they were full of water. Troops hadn't been paid in months in many cases and their military was a wreck.

Some of the same people who handed us the missile gap also handed us the WMD fairy tale, and the press never said a word about their history. It's an old playbook that seems to work, why change it? Hell, you don't even need to change the people involved, give it a decade or two and they can repeat the same mistakes with us none the wiser for it.

else and that one day they will prevail and have so much power that it can't possibly come back to hurt them. It will make them look good, in fact. Cheney thinks this would make him look like somebody who was on top of things, fighting evil.

Throw a little bit of invulnerability and the idea that one is so far above the law as to be completely untouchable, and you'll have a treasure trove of papers left behind.

After all, look at some of the stuff they failed to scrub from Stupid's past: a DUI, two other busts, a year of community service, a checkered TNG career, and a lot of unburied witnesses. They were actually trying to scrub that stuff, something which is likely not the case today.

The only question really is whether or not STupid makes it all moot by simply pardoning all his henchmen before they are even tried. Nixon's pardon is the precedent.

obtained it from Libby. Others have said that Cheney's "copy" of Wilson's NYT article looked like a photocopy, and that staffers kept a copy of 'orders' from Cheney to CYA, in the event that Cheney wasn't satisfied with the manner in which his orders were carried out. This makes sense to me, and the source need not have been Libby. If this is the scenario, I'm not sure that stupid or arrogant would apply. With a boss like Cheney, I'd think it wise to CM(my)A.

in what they are doing, however misguided. Americans still are ok to trade privacy for security when asked in the context of terrorism.

But according to the reliable polls people are not wiling to have their privacy invaded.

sad but true.

they thought they had everything covered with Ashcroft. But then everything went to shit.

Ashcroft to Comey to :nuke:

and sloppy. Every move that has been made by this administration has been one of incompetancy. The blatant, transparent lies, inconstistent in keeping their stories straight, going in different directions, cheap rhetoric and propaganda tell it all. They are not as smart as they think they are thinking they can rely on the ignorant sheep who follow the goat.

It goes to the effect that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Awhile back I heard a great update of that for the current situation: "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice." And so is the case with the Bush crowd. They are stupid, and they are arrogant, and it's often incredibly hard to tell which is which.