No cleverness, today. Just outrage and irritation, garnished with a sense of bewilderment.

Mike points out here the Bush administration's jaw-dropping blindness to what should be public outrage about the two recent appointees: the first, to head up the Commission to investigate the intelligence unpreparedness for the events of September 11, and the second, to run the disturbingly constituted "Information Awareness Office" of the Pentagon.

Mike's summary of the reasons the choice of Kissinger run counter to logic is perfectly lucid. I'll only add the failure of the mainstream press to treat this as shocking news is a confirmation of Christopher Hitchens' oft-made observation that our country and our media insists on treating Kissinger as a respectable and, indeed, eminent citizen. Of course, Hitchens has been on point about this, but he remains a mostly solo act. The New York Times weigh-in on the subject was particularly weak.

It's hard to blame the White House for our inability to mount a reasonable dissent. While the administration's choice of Kissinger remains an almost bizarrely cynical one, why shouldn't they make such self-serving choices when no one is interested in raising their voice in opposition. The real problem here is with the failure of the Democratic party, mainstream newspapers, and well-informed citizens to treat this appointment as an affront to sense. The administration has already revealed itself to be savagely partisan and unable to find fault with any conservative figure, so it's unsurprising that they would see Kissinger's bloody hands as clean enough for government work. But he's both so repellent in himself, as well as (Mike's point) so unsuited for the job both temperamentally and in terms of international reputation that there is no excuse for this. It should be treated with the same horror as if Bush had appointed a convicted felon.

Speaking of convicted felons, there's the other appointment. The DARPA Information Office's project for "Total Information Awareness" is now headed by none other than former National Security Adviser and Iran-Contra mastermind John Poindexter, a man not known for his ability to make what you and I might call sensible ethical judgements. But that won't matter -- he's just responsible for a project to co-ordinate and monitor all electronic transactions between everyone in the country. So ethics, I guess, won't come into it.

Also, this morning I heard Donald Rumsfeld quoted as saying that it doesn't matter what the U.N. inspectors find or don't find in Iraq, Hyssein will still need to produce "evidence" that he's disarming. No word on what might constitute such evidence, though...