Ignorance is Bliss

Biting words for Condi Rice--and implicitly for Dubya--from former Iraq weapons inspector David Kay:

In uncharacteristically caustic remarks about his former colleagues, the weapons inspector, David Kay, said the National Security Council had failed to protect President Bush from faulty prewar intelligence and had left Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "hanging out in the wind" when he tried to gather intelligence before the war about Iraq's weapons programs.

"Where was the N.S.C?" Dr. Kay asked, suggesting that the president had come to depend too heavily on information supplied by Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, and that the president needed to reach out to others for national security information.

"Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth."

True, but this is a man who willingly admits to not reading newspapers (other than perhaps the comics page for "Nancy", "Garfield" and an occasional stab at "Junior Jumble") or following other media sources, since he's so confident that his cabinet will give him all the information he needs. ("Mr. President, I'm pretty sure that 'HSIF' is 'FISH'.")

Either Dubya doesn't want to know the truth--which might, after all, conflict with his predetermined dogma--or Rice has simply been telling him what she knows he wants to hear. Or both.