Do over

By Creature

Has the White House officially admitted they have made a mistake? I think so. The larger story here is the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden as the director of the CIA and the Bush Administration's need to make nice with the critics of General Hayden. The underlying story however, as told in The Washington Post, is the "highly unorthodox move" of disclosing the plan to have Stephen R. Kappes, who quit in November 2004 because of former Director Porter Goss, become deputy director.

So, how does all this add up to the White House admitting it made a mistake? Read below in conjunction with all of the above, and tell me this isn't the Bush equivalent of, oops, our bad, let's try this whole CIA reshuffle thing again:

The move [naming Kappes as number two] was seen as a direct repudiation of Goss's leadership and as an olive branch to CIA veterans disaffected by his 18-month tenure, during which many other senior officials followed Kappes out the door.

A repudiation and an olive branch, sounds like an admission to me. Now, if only they would repudiate Rumsfeld's leadership and hand an olive branch over to the disaffected troops.

Read more.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)