Peter Baker of the Washington Post has scored a remarkable series of interviews with recently-departed BushWorld denizens. The article is remarkable for its low irony quotient, and remarkable for one Peter Baker admission. Clearly it is an attempt to allow some prominent rats-leaving-the-sinking-ship an opportunity to craft a legacy for themselves apart from the fetid legacy of Dear Leader.

But what struck me was the emphasis on sleep.

Unlike Dear Leader, for instance, Iraq War Adviser Meghan O’Sullivan still has her sleep disturbed, just four days after leaving her White House job:

Too soon, evidently, for the dreams to end. “In fact, I was dreaming about Iraq last night,” she said. “And I woke up and thought, ‘When do you think this will stop?’ ”
.
[snip]
.
“I’m not dreaming of Iraq imploding or anything like that,” she said. “But I’m often in Iraq. Or I’ll dream about something Iraq-related or something that’s happening. Sometimes it might be particularly movielike. But a lot of it is just because I’m processing what I’ve done all day.” The now-former aide corrected herself: “What I did all day.”
.
[snip]
.
But she admitted, “I’m a big dreamer.” In both senses of the phrase, she added.

In a just world, Meghan, your Iraq nightmares will never stop. And they will always be big.

[Former White House Director of Strategic Initiatives Pete] Wehner, who recalled losing sleep in 2006 when the war seemed to be further slipping away, blames former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “It was mishandled in a lot of ways,” he said. “The administration went in with a plausible approach and a plausible strategy, but it was wrong. The secretary of defense didn’t make the adjustments that he ought to have and there’s a cost to that and that’s something you live with.”

Maybe it’s something you live with, Pete, but almost 5,000 Americans and untold Iraqis have died with it.

And sweet Sara Taylor, aide to Rove who ran the White House political office where most nefarious plans were hatched?

“The first couple weeks are euphoria because you can sleep and all that,” said Sara Taylor, the White House political director who spent eight years working for Bush before leaving in May.

Back to young Miss O’Sullivan, who describes her life plan thusly:

“The first thing I’m going to do is recapture my life,” she said. “I’m taking a poetry class here. I’m going to do a triathlon. And I’m going to break all kinds of records on sleep. And then I’m going to devote the time to thinking about what happened, to thinking about the lessons learned.”

It sounds to me as if wee Meghan is planning a return to power, like Rumsfeld and Cheney did during their years in the wilderness. This one we need to watch, should she avoid her well-deserved trip to The Hague.

The journamailizm reached a crescendo, though, during Peter Baker’s conversation with Karl Rove, when we learn that no one’s really off-leash yet.

But it’s not as if he has gone off the reservation. At the end of the interview, he asked that his quotes be sent to the White House first. “I’m still a cog in the great machine,” he explained.

And, by the way — Peter? Did you sent Rove’s quotes to the White House for approval? Did you also send Bartlett’s, and O’Sullivan’s, and Wehner’s, and Inboden’s? Does seeking a legacy for war criminals still require approval of the White House? Because if so, you are also still a cog in the great machine.

Sleep well, cogs.

Related posts:

  1. Torture by Numbers: 264 Hours of Sleep Deprivation
  2. Sunday Late Night: Roy Blunt’s Values are Being Challenged
  3. Sunday Late Night: Who is the Commerce Secretary Calling?
  4. Late Night: “Wait, My Fifteen Minutes of Fame Aren’t Up Yet!”
  5. Sunday Late Night: Let Her, Man