Criminally Incompetent or Incompetently Criminal?, Dept.

Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards - New York Times

Hmm. Let's see. So, someone at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) in the State Department kinda-sorta went off the reservation and offered the jackbooted thugs of Blackwater limited-use immunity regarding the faster-pussycat-bang!-bang! at Nisour Square in Baghdad without consultation (supposedly) with any ranking State officials or with the Justice Department who, you know, has the point on such deals. And the head of DS, Richard Griffin, resigned last week to "move on to new challenges". Like avoiding indictment, presumably.

Wow. Sounds like a good old Mongolian pooch-screw down at Foggy Bottom. I can't imagine at least a few more people aren't going to bite the dust before it settles on this lovely moment in American foreign policy. But now, as we all know, accountability is the watchword for this administration, so shouldn't the head of the State Department be the one who takes the bullet? Shouldn't the extra-long-grain Rice nobly but quietly, head lowered, shoulders rounded, withdraw into the long shadows of disgrace?

BAAH-HAH!! Just funnin'! There's no frackin' way I-Want-Condi is going to take responsibility for this. Come on. It took bull mastiffs and a high-pressure hose to get Li'l Albertito Gonzalez to loosen his grip on his desk chair! People don't quit the Bush Cabinet unless you've got audio, video, documentary, and, possibly, StormTracker Doppler Radar footage of them rolling that busload of orphans off the cliff. If any deals were cut, they'll have been done, of course, without the knowledge or sanction of the Seventh Floor where Her Cacao Nibs holds court. Deals cut by rogue employees. Coincidentally with another pack of rogue employees. Are you noticing how when shit gets done, it's always unauthorized? Like there's no hint of a corporate culture that tacitly or otherwise encourages cowboying and jiggery-pokery? "Plausible deniability" enshrined as organizational credo. Credo credere credidi creditus. All the credit, none of the blame, that's the Bush appointee game.

More on this breaking story as it shatters...