Thanks, Bob, for the addled confirmation.

I always knew President Shrub was an epic ignoramus with no knowledge of history, and that he was utterly incurious to boot. Some sized up Bush as merely lazy and/or suffering from some annoying but slight cognitive issue that caused the Commander in Chief, who otherwise was a model of intelligence, to mangle sentences and garble words. But now we have even more proof that all along he truly was an outsized cretin.

According to reporter Bob Woodward, with regard to the conduct of the war in Iraq, and its putative success, President Bush placed great importance on body counts. My immediate thought was this is exactly the sort of idiocy that the Mandarins of the Vietnam War were obsessed with. Body counts and kill ratios were crucial metrics that unmentionables like Robert McNamara obsessively peered over and touted to demonstrate that the war we were clearly losing badly, was, in fact, being won. It's a cliche, but none the less true for being so, that those who do not learn from, (in this case, recent) history, are doomed to repeat it. One wonders if anyone around Bush had the sense or guts to point out, ever so gingerly, to the Commander in Chief that he had his head way up his ass regarding the importance of body counts. I wouldn't have expected Cheney to do the deed, he was, after all, delighted we were there bouncing the rubble around and wouldn't want to run the risk of changing our hideous commitment in any way lest his pal's fat contracts be terminated before the full compliment of booty was squirreled away. Clearly fellow Republican, and war hero John McCain, let me say that again, war hero, John McCain wasn't consulted. Thank goodness he and that human treasure trove of public service, Sarah Palin will be in charge come January.