Black eye(s) for Bush: When it rains it pours, eh?

• A secret document leaked in the UK shows that Tony Blair and the Bush administration were planning an attack on Iraq eight months before the war started, despite denials to the contrary. The "UK eyes only" document dated July 23, 2002, stated: "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force. The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation." (In January of 2003, Ari Fleischer told the press that Hussein was running out of time, but added, "I have not heard the President put a time period on it." Right.)

• Meanwhile, Aljazeera reports that as recently as two weeks ago Donald Rumsfeld had a secret meeting with Saddam Hussein in which he "offered [Hussein] freedom and a possible return to public life if he made a televised request to rebel groups for a ceasefire with allied forces." Apparently it doesn't take much for Rumsfeld to consider reinstating the "brutal rule [of] a dictator like Saddam Hussein."

• If that's not embarrassing enough, a 1971 tape has resurfaced in which Donald Rumsfeld is heard agreeing with Richard Nixon that, like their counterparts in Africa, most black Americans are "just out of the trees."

• Despite the Commander-in-Chief's confidence, military recruiting is apparently in such dire straits that some recruiters will do just about anything to sign up soldiers. A Denver high school journalist pretended he was a marijuana user and that he had no high school diploma—two disqualifiers for military service. Recruiters said: no problem. One urged him to get a fake diploma online, and another drove the student to purchase a drug detox kit.