I don’t know what better evidence there could be that Dick Cheney has come unhinged than this:

Who was the mystery official on Vice President
Dick Cheney’s plane? There were plenty of clues about his identity if you read a transcript of his remarks.

The rules were simple. The official who briefed reporters on Cheney’s plane could be identified only as a senior administration official. But the high-ranking official wasn’t very careful about concealing his identity as Cheney wrapped up his round-the-world trip with surprise stops in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pay attention to the pronouns — me and I — that the official uses in describing the vice president’s mission.

“The reason the president wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border,” the senior administration official said Tuesday.

OK, it was apparent the briefer was Cheney himself and that he gave himself away. White House press secretary Tony Snow encouraged the vice president’s office Wednesday to identify the briefer by name but he was turned down. “The vice president’s office made its feelings known,” he said with a grin that suggested a very senior official was behind the decision.

The White House distributed a text of the official’s comments on Air Force Two as Cheney flew from Afghanistan to Oman before beginning his flight back to Washington. The transcript did not spell out why the official on Cheney’s plane would not be quoted by name.

We’ve all laughed about the ‘undisclosed locations’ and all that. But Cheney is losing his grip on sanity. He won’t admit that he was the one that talked to the press? He can’t even phrase his ‘senior administration official’ remarks in a way the hides his identity? Man. He really needs Scooter back. The man can’t do anything right without him. At least he didn’t tell the press to quote him as a ‘former hill staffer’.