And the smear campaign goes on...

a.k.a. today's Quotes of the Day.

I'll admit, it's not fair to take fairly short soundbites from two different people and compare them like this, but it sure is fun! From Dick Cheney's interview on Rush Limbaugh's show:

Well, he wasn't -- he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff. And I saw part of his interview last night, and he wasn't --

-- Vice President Dick Cheney

Which was shortly followed by this comment by Condoleezza Rice in an interview given to a number of AP reporters:

I would not use the word out of the loop. He was in every meeting about terrorism. He was not in the President's daily briefing with George Tenet. What the President did was to reestablish his principal conduit for intelligence information on everything, including terrorism, to be his DCI. But he was not -- he was in every meeting that was held on terrorism, all the deputies' meetings, the principals' meeting that was held, and so forth -- the early meetings after September 11th. When the President went to Camp David, he went with his closest advisors on September 15th. It was a time when he wanted people in the room with whom he had a particular relationship --

-- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice

So which is it? He can't be both "out of the loop" and "in every meeting about terrorism." I am curious whether Clarke was on this trip to Camp David or not, that is, whether he had this "particular relationship" with the President or not. It's not clear from her statement.

What is becoming clear, however, is that this administration has had a hard-on for Iraq from day one. It wasn't a matter of whether to invade, it was a matter of time. The only question was under what pretext.