Hmmmm...

Following up on the "President" and his sleep-inducing address towards immigration last night comes this tasty tidbit via Daily Kos, via CQ:

It's December 2005, and Bill "I hate Keith Olberman" O'Reilly of Fox "News" was speaking with Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and offered up his own stop-gap measure for the immigration issue: "Why don't you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?"

Michael Chertoff didn't like this idea and dismissed it without hesitation, stating; "Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission. I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there."

Really?? Interesting...

(Ignoring for a moment the fact that this plan has a lot of holes and a LOT of opposition, especially from the President's own party; let's ponder on that a little: special challenges... no proper training... methinks that this does not bode well)

Chertoff went on to add that he thinks: "... it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem. Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way."

Really?? Interesting...

This was Michael Chertoff today in an interview with MSNBC Anchor Randy Meier (transcript found at the Washington Post: "Well, Randy, there are about 450,0000 total members of the National Guard. And all that would be serving at any one time, at most, would be 6,000. So the National Guard's comfortable that this is not going to interfere with the other important missions that the guardsmen do."

Really? Interesting...

Apparently the administration and the department could not find a way to combat the problem that was comprehensive enough for them... I wonder what changed??

Oh, that's right.... approval ratings that are absolutely Nixonian in their levels.

This administration is making flip-flopping an art form...