Right Hand, Left Hand

Compare:

On Monday night, President Bush made the dramatic announcement that the United States would demolish Abu Ghraib prison and build a modern maximum-security center in Baghdad to replace it. But on Wednesday, Pentagon officials said the president’s words had taken them by surprise, and they scrambled without success to come up with details of the plan.
“This office was not aware of any plans to raze Abu Ghraib or build another prison,” said a Pentagon spokesman who insisted that he not be identified because he did not want to be seen as contradicting the president.

And:

When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the latest terror warning, the rest of the government — including the Department of Homeland Security — heard the details on television.
. . .
Sources tell CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr the Justice Department did nothing to put other agencies in the loop before broadcasting “be-on-the-lookout” pictures of seven suspected terrorists.
The information was not shared with state and local police forces, or even with the FBI’s field offices. It wasn’t supposed to be this way after 9/11, said one administration official, who noted “the whole warning process was usurped by the Attorney General.”
Beyond that, senior counterterrorism officials question the legitimacy of the bulletin, saying there is no new, specific, credible evidence pointing to an imminent attack in the U.S.

Should we surprised that Ashcroft unilaterally makes a politically-tinged announcement without consulting the government agency primarily responsible for that area? Isn’t he simply following the example of his boss?
Another example of how government incompetence flows down from the top.

TDOT Multi-Modal Plan

The good folks at the Tennessee Department of Transportation are developing a Long-Range Multi modal Plan (LRTP) which will “bring together the needs for ALL modes of transportation, including rail, transit, ports and waterways, aviation, pedestrians and bicycles in addition to highways.” This is TDOT’s “first MULTIMODAL plan that strives to integrate all modes of transportation into a seamless system.”
Ha ha.
At any rate, you participate in this effort by filling out a survey here.
I’m filling one out which requests better accommodations be made for bicyclists and pedestrians in future road projects.

“Where are we for all of that?”

General Anthony Zinni (Ret.), Former Commander, Central Command, on Iraq:

We, unfortunately, went into this war despite the fact of my disagreements of going into it the wrong time, wrong place, wrong threat, wrong priority. We went into it ill equipped because we went into it with a pie in the sky best case. We bought into what ever the exiles were selling us, and what we wanted to believe: flowers in the street, to go in and score a quick victory and this would turn almost automatically.
A handful of people from the Pentagon going in trying to reconstruct the country, pulling together the CPA from embassies around the world and dragging people in that weren’t cohesive part of an organization like the military, that have worked together that understand the problem.
You can see the results we’ve got. If you disagree with me or if anyone disagrees with me, tell me you’re satisfied with the planning, the strategy, the decisions that have led us to this point. We are about to have our 800th kid killed out there. I believe we’re at 799 today. We have had 4,500 kids wounded, injured, maimed, some of them, tragically, severely.
We are about to approach $200 billion of our treasure. Where are we for all of that? I think the American citizens have to ask that question. For someone to tell me it’s unpatriotic to question this while our troops are out there doing this and to see what is happening to our image and our reputation around the world, I think it is unpatriotic not to ask these questions and not pose these challenges.

I was a bit surprised to see that Tom Clancy also views the war as a “mistake.”
Who will be the next to jump ship?