Never mind...

... the interesting stuff coming out of The Intelligence Summit as to Hussein and WMD's:

The overall picture he painted was one not of a single smoking gun out of Saddam's mouth, but of a climate in which Saddam and his deputies were supremely confident of their ability to evade - and efficacy in having evaded UN inspections... all the way up to 2002. The tapes are subject to varying interpretations because so much depends on one's interpretation of context, the nuance of particular words and guesses as to how to fill in blanks in the conversations.

Much more to come...

Never mind the kidnapping of Nigerian oil ministers by "militants" (any bets as to their faith tradition?):

Militants who seized nine foreign oil workers in a string of attacks across Nigeria's troubled delta region threatened Sunday to step up assaults by firing rockets at international oil tankers.

Never mind the killing of 15 Christians in Nigeria by cartoon-enraged Muslims:

Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.

Never mind the interesting connections being made between Muslim riots in Europe and the welfare state:

In Bruce Bawer's new book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, the side effects of the appeasement of Muslims by the Danish government are clear--as their government pumps more and more welfare money into the pockets of disgruntled Muslims, the rate of violence against "infidels" there increases.

Never mind the evidence that bureaucratic inaction is killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Glen J. sends the link to this LA Times article about energy-weapon technology used to defeat IEDs...in tests, 90% of IEDs were neutralized...but the government bureaucracy is moving to slow to produce and ship the neutralizers.

More important things should be kept in the forefront of the American people's minds and hearts in the coming days:

MAIN PRESS PLANS ANOTHER WEEK OF CHENEY SHOOTING COVERAGE
Sun Feb 19 2006 10:57:36 ET

If the nation's top magazines have the pulse of the country -- get ready for another exhaustive week of exhaustive Cheney shooting coverage!

This just in... Both TIME and NEWSWEEK are planning high impact covers of Cheney for newsstands starting tomorrow, with each magazine rolling out top staff bylines and thousands of words on the hunting incident: TIME: With deep reporting by John Cloud, Mike Allen and Matthew Cooper/ Washington, Cathy Booth Thomas and Patricia Kilday Hart/ Austin, and Hilary Hylton. NEWSWEEK urgently brings in its big investigative guns: Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey, Mark Hosenball and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Carol Rust in Texas.

NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter essays that media budget cuts and shifting news priorities have contributed to the public being in the dark about Cheney's ways and means.

TIME headlines a poll: DICK CHENEY APPROVAL RATING 29%

NEWSWEEK editor Mark Whitaker defends his decision to push for another week of Cheney-Shooting coverage: "The reason we ultimately decided to stick with a cover is not because of the hunting incident itself-although we did turn up some new details that you might not have read elsewhere-but because of what it says about the mysterious world of the most powerful vice president of recent times."

To which VariFrank, while in the throes of an emergency at the local hospital, brings us the response that pretty much sums things up for me:

... one emergency room observation that I must pass on to you.

"NBC's Today show was on the Emergency Room TV. Katie Couric was flogging the "Shotgun Cheney" story and interviewing Mary Matalin when the entire room let out a groan. After Katie started with the "let me read to you a few reactions.." line of questioning to Mary; a senior citizen threw a magazine across the room at the TV and shouted "isn't it illegal to beat a dead horse"?

Everyone laughed.

To keep from crying...  (and thanks to The Anchoress for the inspiration).