Bush's sneaky Kissinger appointment. One of the best ways to bury an announcement that you're not too proud of is to make it on the day before Thanksgiving. Today President Bush named geriatric war criminal Henry Kissinger to head a commission that will investigate whatever intelligence failures may have contributed to 9/11. What a shocking and appalling insult to the families of the victims. To paraphrase what Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, every word out of Kissinger's mouth is a lie, including "and" and "the." In 2001 I wrote an essay in the Phoenix on Christopher Hitchens's indictment of Kissinger as published in Harper's magazine; Hitchens's article was later turned into a book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.