'No warnings'

To comprehend the real hilarity of the current meltdown at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., review (and relish) the very un-presidential activities of the occupant during the last week.

First, there was this tidbit: Maximum Commandante Dick Cheney sends out invitations to GOP loyalists for a June 19 dinner to honor President-Figurehead "W" for, among other things, confronting and fighting terrorism. Wrapping the administration in the flag and castigating critics as treasonous is, of course, the favorite spin-tactic of this hell-bent-on-authoritarianism administration.

That I got one of these invites (sorry, Dick, but our publisher won't let me write off $25,000 for a table for 10 to my expense account) shows just how utterly incompetent the administration is at assessing friends and foes.

Among the perks for stuffing the GOP's pockets, the White House promised some photos, including one of Bush on Air Force One Sept. 11.

Without a doubt, that's raising campaign cash while standing on a pile of corpses. The awful tastelessness of the gutter-level ploy gagged even the docile, fearful-to-be-called-unpatriotic Democrats and mainstream media.

Just as that rather tepid little bit of Bush smarminess was beginning to subside, the really big, smelly chunk of merde hit the air-circulating system.

Prior to Sept. 11, Bush had had warnings -- oh yes he had -- about a terrorist threat. His mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer, had lied -- oh yes he had and despicably so -- when shortly after 3,000 innocent people died in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the spokesman proclaimed "no warnings."

The press has acted as if this story smashed into their computers with "no warnings." But it's been there all along. The Los Angeles Times' very savvy Washington reporter, Richard Serrano, reported Sept. 20 -- nine days after the terrorist attack -- that "FBI and CIA officials were advised in August that as many as 200 terrorists were slipping into this country and planning 'a major assault on the United States.'"