The new issue of the New Yorker contains a long hit piece on David Addington, the vice president’s chief of staff. (A hit piece? Well, the illustration portrays a smiling Addington feeding the Constitution into a shredder while Cheney looks on with a maniacal smile, rubbing his hands together in excitement, and, behind Cheney, a much smaller George W. Bush, also smiling, watches.) Writer Jane Mayer, after talking to a variety of Addington enemies (and a very few friends), comes to this conclusion about the administration’s policies dealing with suspected terrorists:

By emphasizing interrogation over due process, the government intended to preempt future attacks before they materialized…Yet, almost five years later, this improvised military model, which Addington was instrumental in creating, has achieved very limited results.

A reader might ask, What is wrong with this picture?