The Vice-President Loves Surprises
By Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn’t you tell the world, EH?
Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
Peter Howard at Duck calls out the transparent stupidity of this statement:
The White House vigorously defended today a secret program of combing through a vast international data base containing banking transactions involving thousands of Americans. Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials said the program, whose existence was revealed on Thursday night by The New York Times, was both legal and necessary to deter terrorism.
As Peter notes, secret programs cannot, by definition, deter anything. The Vice President should be falling to his knees and thanking the media for revealing this little gem.