And speaking of President Compulsive Conservative and his Gang of Evildoers...I missed the 60 Minutes interview with Paul O'Neill last night, but it sounds like a real stunner...this could be the next "Valerie Plame/yellowcake"-type story, peeling away one more layer of duplicity and greed from the smug public face of the Bush Administration. Or at least I hope so. The story is this: O'Neill gave lengthy interviews and thousands of documents to Ron Suskind, Wall Street Journal journo and author of The Price of Loyalty, a new book on what some disgruntled former Bush insiders, like O'Neill, say really goes on in W-Land -- and the book, coincidentally, has rocketed up to #1 on the Amazon Top Ten this morning.

Here's the bombshell -- O'Neill was present at meetings in January and February 2001 (that is, days after W.'s inauguration and 9 months before Sept. 11th) planning the invasion of Iraq, removal of Saddam Hussein, and division of Iraqi oil spoils to global corporate suitors. Let me quote: "[O'Neill says] he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’' says O’Neill."

Let me emphasize: The Bush Administration planned to make war on Iraq from the moment W. took office, and they've been using Sept. 11 as a P.R. cover story, says a former Cabinet Secretary. Not a conspiracy theorist, crazed left-wing ideologue, or traitorous insurgent: a former Administration official. What more do we need, people? If Tom Daschle can't get it together to start an investigation and move for impeachment based on this, what is left of the checks-and-balances mechanism of our government? And let's just repeat this to ourselves quietly: Clinton lied about sex, Bush lies about war...

Not to lay it all on W., who O'Neill describes as a sub-moron when it comes to leadership: "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people" at Cabinet meetings. Who's running the show? Mr. Cheney, I'm looking in your direction: "The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President Dick Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way Dick likes it," says O’Neill." Fantastic -- I live in the Unites States of The Way Dick Likes It. No thanks!