In terms of geopolitics, it's utterly astonishing what a powerful president George W. Bush has been, even going back as far as the late 1990s.

Err, come again?!

James Taranto catches this classic groaner in the Times of London:

Simon Jenkins, a columnist for London's Sunday Times, comments on reports that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair toyed with the idea of bombing al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network:

That Blair and Bush should have discussed bombing the Al-Jazeera building in Qatar is hardly surprising. They agreed to bomb the headquarters of Serbian television during the Kosovo war.

Well, color us impressed. Who knew President Bush was already conducting foreign policy back in 1999, when he was still governor of Texas?

As Glenn Reynolds noted in May of 2002, two years before CBS's obsession would reach full err, maturity with Mary Mapes and Ra^therGate, the Tiffany Network filed this astonishing report, piped in fresh from the Twilight Zone:

FREUDIAN SLIP? Better visit this CBS story fast because they'll probably fix this:

The Washington Post said Saturday that a top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush in 1998 focused on efforts by Osama bin Laden to strike at targets in the U.S.

Um, President who in 1998? I've been pretty hard on the Bush Administration over this -- and especially on the lame spin the Administration is offering -- but this just might suggest that some other people have a bit of an agenda.

(Although, to be fair, chronological lapses are the least of its issues.)