Bush's mind: empty, closed, or both? Check this out from Elisabeth Bumiller's profile of national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice in today's New York Times:

Richard Haass, the former director of policy planning at the State Department who is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recalls going to see Ms. Rice in July 2002, well before the president began making a public case for ousting Mr. Hussein, to discuss with Ms. Rice "the pros and cons" of making Iraq a priority.

"Basically she cut me off and said, 'Save your breath - the president has already decided what he's going to do on this,'" Mr. Haass said.

Not that you can blame Bush. After all, there were all of those dangerous aluminum tubes and stores of Niger yellowcake to be gotten rid of.

And as Bush recently explained to Diane Sawyer when she pointed out that the White House had actually accused Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction, "as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons":

"So what's the difference?"