The wait is over! At last Al Kamen reveals the target(s) of the suspicious Cheney office fire

I know we've all been on pins and needles, waiting to find out what the firebug who started the fire in Vice President Cheney's office complex was trying to destroy.

Well, the wait is over. Today Al Kamen has the answers in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

Winning Answers to a Burning Question

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

And now, the winners of the In the Loop contest to guess the real target of that suspicious fire last month in Vice President Cheney's office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

One thing is clear: There's a lot of anger out there. Dozens of entries referred to the devil, torture and waterboarding tapes, sparks from an office door left open to the gates of hell and such.

Also, because a court ruled during the week the contest began that White House visitor logs must be released, many entrants said those were the focus of the blaze.

In any event, and in no particular order, here are the winners:

* "Plans for Cheney's yet-to-be-announced return to Afghanistan this spring to fly-fish in the Kabul River. The snow in the Hindu Kush is rapidly building, and the spring thaw promises to bring fresh fishing opportunities." -- Retired Marine Lt. Col. John J. Gruehl, now senior mentor to the chief of acquisition and procurement in the Interior Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

* "Federalist 47, regarding the tyranny of the executive." -- Thurgood Marshall Jr., a Washington lawyer and Clinton White House Cabinet secretary

* "Cheney's succession plan should there be another 'pretzel' incident." -- Mark Corallo, Washington communications consultant and former Bush administration Justice Department spokesman

* "Al-Qaeda . . . 'The mission is to rout terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice,' President Bush told former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. 'Or, as I explained to the prime minister in Western terms, to smoke them out of their caves, to get them running so we can get them.' " -- Eric Porterfield, who handles international PR for the American Red Cross

* "Cheney's two-page-long list of other words to call Sen. Patrick Leahy." -- Dave Grimaldi, Washington lawyer and former House aide

* "Nothing. The fire was just a diversion set by the VP's staff so he could, just this once, leave the EOB without the 35-car motorcade, and go see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit across the street." -- Thomas J. Glynn, director of international cancer control at the American Cancer Society

* "Nothing. It was simply the best way to prevent providing information for any past, present or future inquiries. Cheney's RNC computer logs? Sorry, but the hard drive was fried in 'the fire.' " -- Retired schoolteacher Jeanne Maushammer of McLean

* "A list of everything that Alberto Gonzales couldn't remember." -- Retired Air Force Col. James A. Ball of Toano, Va.

* "List of future hunting partners." -- Jay B. Tabor of Martinsburg, W.Va.

* "Detailed plans for the oft-postponed Bush-Cheney victory parade through Baghdad (with an option to continue to Tehran)." -- Charles K. Manka, program manager for research support instruments at the Naval Research Laboratory

* "Notes on the Nixon pardon (What are THOSE still doing in there?)" -- Don Brownlee of Montclair, Va., reminding us that Cheney was in the White House back then, working on the Gerald Ford transition before becoming Ford's chief of staff

Another common theme was that the fire was an accident caused by sparks from an overheated shredder. On that theme, with a "Star Trek" twist, we received:

* "Overheard as Cheney toured the charred ruins. Deputy Information Security Officer Montgomery "Scottie" Scott told Cheney: 'I tried telling you, sir! You could not run the executive shredder at warp speed from November '06 on without maintenance down time. But you would not listen! You just would not listen to me, sir. As to when she'll be up and running again, I could not tell you.' " -- Douglas Roscoe of Los Angeles

Congratulations to all the winners, who will receive coveted "In the Loop" T-Shirts, and thanks to all for participating.

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Laws? We don't follow no stinkin' laws! We're the desperados of the Bush regime!

No results yet in Al Kamen's "Guess what burned in the fire in Vice President Cheney's Eisenhower Executive Office Building digs" contest, but Al does have a fresh demonstration, in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column today, of the hilarious way the Right-Wing Crime Machine games the rules*:

Longing for the Land of Beer and Chocolate
One of President Bush's most high-profile recess appointees, Ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray-- is back in Washington and, for the moment, out of a job.

Gray was given a recess appointment to the Brussels job two years ago after then-minority Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation. Gray, White House counsel under Bush I, had infuriated Democrats by leading a campaign for confirmation of several conservative Bush judicial nominations.

That appointment expired last week, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has effectively eliminated the presidential power to make recess appointments.

But Gray still may be returning to Brussels.

There is buzz that the White House wants to name Gray as Bush's "special envoy" to the European Union, a position that doesn't require Senate confirmation and apparently would not give him supervisory authority over mission officials.

Wait a minute. Didn't Bush's first National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD1) abolish all these special envoys? That may mean Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to give special permission for Gray's new appointment.

Gray probably is allowed to have an office at the mission -- hey, the ambassador's office is empty! -- but it's unclear whether he'll live in the ambassador's residence. A section in the State Department's manual appears to say he can't. (Of course Gray, heir to a tobacco fortune, can afford to rent a decent condo, or a palace, for the next year.) Reid, through a spokesman, said yesterday that he "strongly opposes giving Gray all the perks of a position he no longer holds, that such a move would violate the spirit of" a recent Senate-White House agreement on recess appointments and that it "may have reverberations in terms of the White House's ability to actually confirm ambassadors." As the election nears, of course, that ability is minimal at best.

There remains the question of why Gray, a high-powered Washington lawyer and policy wonk, wants to go back to the oft-somnolent E.U. job. Maybe he likes Brussels? Maybe it's near Paris?

*By "rules" I mean what are sometimes known as "laws," a quaintly old-fashioned term that now seems misleading, in that it suggests that these niggling statutory requirements and prohibitions should at least be taken into account if not actually followed by people up to and including the president of the U.S. of A. This we now know is bunk--as long as the president is a wingnut scumbag.

Our prediction, now that Scumbag-in-Chief "Big Dick" has established his millennial Unitary Imperial Presidency, is that the moment the new Democratic president attempts to exercise even the most clearly established, constitutionally and legislatively based authority, he or she will immediately be subjected to 24/7 savaging by the full blast of the Right-Wing Attack Machine, which so loathes America that it will never rest until everything that is good and decent about it is turned into wingnut poop.--Ken

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As we enjoy today's installment of "Where's Paulie W?" we have to pause to wonder: Does this mean we're bombing Korea next?

Al Kamen is back from vacation, and already in today's Washington Post is reporting a sighting of the man we love to hate, "Paulie Wolfshit" Wolfowitz.

Where's Wolfowitz?

Keeping up with . . . former Pentagon No. 2 and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who's now at the American Enterprise Institute. Last seen Friday in Seoul chatting with incoming president Lee Myung-bak of the conservative Grand National Party.

Wolfowitz was part of an informal Asia-hands delegation put together by former representative Steve Solarz, now senior counselor at consulting firm APCO Worldwide, and Cal Berkeley professor emeritus Robert Scalapino as the new Korean government takes shape. Others in the meeting included former defense secretary William Perry, now at Stanford, former nuke negotiator Robert Gallucci, now at Georgetown, former ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith and Alexander Vershbow, the ambassador to Korea.

That's actually a fairly not-all-that-embarrassing assemblage. (Steve Solarz once represented Howie's and my old Brooklyn CD, and was a pretty decent congressman.) Still, it's always useful rule to watch where Paulie W. treads--and stand clear.


DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE CONTEST

Al also reminds us that tonight is the deadline for his "What Was in That Office, Anyway?"
contest:

Last Call for High Honors

Don't forget! The deadline is midnight tonight for the In the Loop contest to guess what the intended target was in that still-suspicious fire last month in Vice President Cheney's office in the Old Executive Office Building.

Send your entries to hitthevault@washpost.com. Top 10 winners, in addition to bragging rights and a mention in the column, also get a coveted, official In the Loop T-shirt. Hill and administration folks can enter on background. You must include a daytime or cellphone number. Good luck.

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