Idiocy is contagious

Remember that "actionable" idiocy that got me so fed up? Apparently it's spread from Bush since then. Press Secretary McClellan Thursday:

I would reiterate, too, that our military continues to stay on the -- our coalition continues to say on the offensive in Iraq to go after the holdouts of the former regime and the foreign terrorists who are in the country. They are working on targeted strikes and working to be able to deploy quickly to prevent attacks from happening in the first place. They are working to strengthen our border security, as well, along with getting more Iraqis involved in those efforts. We are working to improve our intelligence gathering, so that we can have more actionable intelligence to act on.

McClellan Wednesday:

You need to direct those questions to the military in terms of the information that they are obtaining. We are continuing -- when we talk about ways that we are working to improve the security situation in that part of the Baghdad area that remains dangerous, we also talk about improving intelligence-gathering. And we're getting more and more help from the Iraqi people themselves in that human intelligence-gathering, and getting actionable intelligence that we can act on to prevent attacks from happening in the first place.

But apparently, it may have started out with Condoleeza Rice, who, as National Security Advisor, really ought to have more of a clue of how to describe intelligence. Condi, May 20, 2002:

But it will not just stop there. I think that both Bob Mueller and George Tenet have talked about important organizational changes that they want to make and need to make to make certain that the right kind of analysis is done of intelligence information, so that we know when something is actionable.

So apparently, almost a year and a half ago, just over half a year after 9/11, they'd already decided that they would, indeed, file that lawsuit.