Keystone Cops

You know, it's bad enough that the international standing of the U.S. has fallen dramatically during Bush because of his policies. But can you imagine how the U.S. must look with crap like this going on as well?

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington's foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations -- creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell's chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that "neocons" in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China -- an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.

The top U.S. diplomat in Taiwan at the time, Douglas Paal, backs up Wilkerson's account, which is being hotly disputed by key former defense officials.

Ok, this is typical risky/craziness advocated by the neocons nuts. But then check out this comment by Steve Benen:

As CQ's Jeff Stein reported, there was an awkward Keystone Kops routine playing out during the early years of Bush's first term. "The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on," Wilkerson said, "essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing."

In turn, Powell would dispatch his own envoy "right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they'd been told by the Defense Department."

Keystone cops indeed. As more information comes out we are continually getting verification that no one has been driving the bus. Bush is incurious, lazy and easily manipulated. The government has reflected the chaos that is his personality and style.