On a cookbook that Betty Crocker wouldn't touch

Or, The W Stands For "Whoopsy!"

Okay, so say your country is at war. There isn't so much a cohesive enemy as a whole bunch of groups that would love to see you dead, dead, dead. Some of them are pissed off that you're in their country, some of them are pissed off that you're on the planet, and some of them are pissed off at other people and you just happen to be in the way. A lot of them would like to get their hands on the kind of weapon that would not blow people up so much as vaporize them and cause their neighborhood to fluoresce under a black light.

Say that you've got a whole lot - like, a whole whole lot - of information from these guys. You've got documents and notes and diagrams out the wazoo. Unfortunately, they're all in Arabic, and since you keep firing your Arabic linguists for taking it up the wazoo, you're kind of short on translating power at the moment. Whatever will you do?

Suddenly, salvation comes in the form of a few brave, patriotic bloggers. "Put them on teh Internets," they said. "With the entire world having untrammeled access to sensitive intelligence, those documents'll get translated in a jiffy! It's an Army of Davids!"

"Brilliant!" Pete Hoekstra cries. "We'll do it right away!"

And John Negroponte is all, "Guys, I don't know."

And George W. Bush is all, "Do it!"

And thus documents, in Arabic, providing specific and explicit instructions on making atomic bombs and processing chemical and biological weapons, become available to any Tom, Dick, or Mahmoud with a Compaq and a cable modem.

These are the people who promised to protect us. "My job is to protect you," Bush says. Don't you just feel protected? Don't you just?

Wasn't that a great idea?

(Hat tip to Hullabaloo and Sadly, No!)