[andyfox]

"If the United States were a true empire, vice president Cheney said, "we would certainly preside over a much greater piece of the earth's surface than we currently do."

This after Cheney said on National Pubic Radio that two trailers discovered after the war contained proof of Iraq's biological weapons programs.

Meanwhile the president said that the weapons search, from which the chief arms inspector resigned, saying that our prewar data was flawed, had proven that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities," an interesting use of linguistic obfuscation, even for a man who does it so often and so well (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not).

This is precisely the way for a political party to lose the White House, against all odds. The Democrats managed to do it in 1968 after winning by a landslide in 1964 and they haven't really recovered since. Meanwhile, another headline says "2 in Iraq Overbilling Are Fired Halliburton Says." The vice-president, of course, said "Halliburton gets unfairly maligned simply because of their past association with me."

John Kerry may start thinking about his cabinet soon.