In the film version of today’s dramatic events, you’d want Harrison Ford to play the President:
“I’m losing altitude – I’m going to read,” President Bush announced to a Camp David after-dinner gathering that included several members of his administration, the nation’s top intelligence officials and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Vice President Dick Cheney was about the only one among them who knew that, by the time the rest of the group disbanded their get-together about 15 minutes later, a weary president would not be tucked safely into bed in his cabin at the mountain retreat but already on board a helicopter bound for Andrews Air Force Base and, eventually, Baghdad.
Bush was eager to meet with Iraq’s new leaders, and the plan for the trip was put together as soon as the Iraqis filled those final two cabinet positions:
A high-profile two-day meeting on Iraq at Camp David was set up to conceal the real plan and provide a cover story to bring al-Maliki and his ministers to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. They were told they were needed there, at a former palace of deposed leader Saddam Hussein that now serves as the U.S. Embassy’s quarters, to participate in a videoconference linking them with Bush and his advisers at Camp David.
Extending the ruse further, Bush’s publicly released schedule for Tuesday even went so far as to state that he was holding a news conference in the White House’s Rose Garden upon a mid-afternoon return from Camp David.
Apart from Cheney, the only Cabinet members notified in advance were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Bartlett said….
…
Al-Maliki wasn’t even informed of the dramatic change in plans for the day until Bush had safely landed in the Green Zone and they were minutes away from their first in-person meeting.
Back at Camp David, administration figures who expected Bush to show up for breakfast Tuesday morning were instead told for the first time of the president’s true whereabouts, Bartlett said. Among those in the group finding out not long before the rest of the world were some of the nation’s top secret-keepers, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and CIA Director Michael Hayden.
That’s hilarious! I’d love to have seen Negroponte’s and Hayden’s expressions when they learned that W. wouldn’t be joining them for breakfast. Yet another embarrassing intelligence failure!
But you know what it all means? This time, the moonbats are right — BUSH LIED!!!