On second thought, maybe Wolfie isn't doing such a heckuva job

As I hear tell, integrity and forthrightness used to be important to people. And I don't mean in the sense that: "I think it is important that we have a forthright Attorney General with integrity."

I mean in the sense of: "I value my own integrity and forthrightness, because it allows me to look in the mirror without cringing."

Case in point: White House Mouthpiece Tony Snow, formerly of Fox News, and henceforth on this blog and in my mind The Minister of Truth, has been repeatedly quoted as sayiing that Paul Wolfowitz had the GWBush's and the White House's Full Confidence. Today he reiterated the White House's support for Wolfowitz. Or did he?

While saying "we do support Paul Wolfowitz" and "we have faith in Paul Wolfowitz", these statements were part of the Minister's bizarrely confusing (and much longer) statement in response to a fairly straightforward question this morning. A neat parlor game, a brain-twisting conundrum of a puzzle, could be made out of trying to figure out what exactly is meant by the following:

MR. SNOW: Let me explain. There are two separate things going on. Number one, there is an inquiry right now -- I believe Mr. Wolfowitz today is talking to the World Bank, presenting his side -- on personnel matters. And what we've said all along is, first, we do support Paul Wolfowitz.

But the second thing is, you need to separate these into separate inquiries, and a lot of times I think they get bundled together. He has made it clear that he made mistakes. It is pretty clear also that there were problems, in terms of communicating the proper ways of dealing with personnel issues -- as you know, originally he tried to recuse himself, then an ethics board said that he ought to get himself involved. The fact is that he made mistake; they're not, in our view, firing offenses.

Separately, at some point in the future, there are going to be conversations about the proper stewardship of the World Bank. And Mr. Wolfowitz, himself, says that what you need to have is a full, fair conversation about what is going to be best for the future of the Bank. In that sense, they say all options are on the table. This is not to leap to any conclusions, but to give you a statement of fact -- which is members of the board and Mr. Wolfowitz need to sit down and figure out what is, in fact, going to be best for this Bank to be able to serve as a venue for -- especially in the developing world -- for trying to address problems of poverty, and to try to create the proper kinds of hope and opportunity in the long run.

So what we're really talking about is, let us get through this original process because, again, not a firing offense; throughout, regardless, we have faith in Paul Wolfowitz. We do think it is appropriate for everybody to sit down after the fact, calm down, take a look and figure out, okay, how do you move forward.

Does your brain hurt yet? This doublethink gibberish may well be a result of GWBush's failure to persuade the other six G7 members of Wolfie's worthiness in an "emergency" conference. The only G7 member to side with GWBush on this emergency issue, as he continues to wager (squander) our nation's international credibility on issues where there are only the slimmest odds that he can advance his own personal peccadilloes, was Japan. The remaining members were quoted as saying varying iterations of "Um, what? Hah, hah, ho... Oh, sorry, you're being serious?"