Psych!

So remember the one intelligent idea Bush had in the whole SOTU speech? The one about reducing our dependence on foreign oil by 75%? Well, that was a whatchamacallit...

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic advisor said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

See? It was a... metaphor? A slice of life? Pun? Vorshtein?

Asked why the president used the words ''the Middle East'' when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that ''every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.'' The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

Hee hee, I'm not even going to comment on that, it's funny enough by itself.

I assume we're all agreed that all this backtracking is probably the result of some Saudi prince watching the SOTU address and calling Bush at home and saying, "Hey, Goober, what the hell?" That'll teach Bush to put the interests of the American people above the interests of his best friends in terrorist-supporting Middle-Eastern nations!