At this point, it’s a generally accepted fact that the CIA did its best to hobble Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. Damaging leak after damaging leak hit the New York Times or the Post just when they might be expected to inflict maximum mayhem.

And it made good sense: Bush had made it clear that he planned to saddle the Agency with primary responsibility for the jinxed invasion, in spite of CIA warnings the White House ignored.

But Bush faces another insider insurrection that isn’t quite as well understood, this time from the generals prosecuting the war in Iraq.

Their plan? Dress every visiting Congressional hawk to look like a raging loser bozo. Then trot them out for a photo op, and let the media do its thing.

It worked brilliantly with John McCain’s infamous Baghdad stroll. And now, this: Joe Lieberman looking like the alcoholic clown at your little nephew’s birthday party.

Look, we don’t like Lieberman here at VDB. We think he lied to the people of Connecticut about his political leanings; we’ve never liked his harping on religion; and the way he’s taunted Democrats about a potential party switch has been nothing short of juvenile.

But even Big Joe didn’t deserve this. This makes Dukakis in the tank look like Reagan at the Wall.

Oh, the humanity.

And that’s an image that will stay with you all day, unless we replace it with another. A photo of an American who opposes the War, and doesn’t relinquish his patriotism in so doing. An American with a wicked big beard, beside a wicked big flag.

That’s right: it’s the inscrutable Yusef, VDB photojournalist, snapped by die-hard reader Don. On Memorial Day.

[Cue Whitney Houston, from the pre-Bobby Brown days, “The Star Spangled Banner”]