So now we know. "Flowers and chocolates" wasn't an analytical failure that filtered up from the nation's intelligence community, or even a (perhaps) forgivable miscalculation by sincere, if tragically deluded, senior administration officials.

No, it was just another one of Mr. Cheney's terminological inexactitudes:

Prewar Assessment on Iraq Saw Chance of Strong Divisions The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

POSTSCRIPT: You know, I've had to visit this URL so often in the past few years, I'm thinking of making it my homepage.

UPDATE/RELATED: At this point, I should probably note that a number of admirably plainspoken types have simply abandoned the euphemistic approach, opting instead for what our friends on the right like to call "moral clarity" in response to the linguistic challenge so frequently presented by Messrs. Bush and Cheney.

In other words, they've decided to just start calling a spade a bloody shovel.

--------