It's virtually impossible to write a good article about a state visit. They're so choreographed and repetitive, and the statements made are so anodyne as to be virtually leached of all meaning. But if you want to see that it can actually be done, read Dana Milbank's piece on Hu Jintao's humiliatingly SNAFU-laden welcome at the White House yesterday. It's a doozy.

From today's NYT, on Rumsfeld's self-defense:

He recalled that, during his first tenure as defense secretary during the Ford administration, he had decided to fit the M1 Abrams battle tank with a turbine engine and a 120 millimeter cannon, overriding the Army's own choices.

Is this for real? Rumsfeld personally decided to customize the M-1 to his own tastes? Did he have them put in a Blaupunkt, too? Airbrush a chick riding a dragon on the hood? Or is this an "I invented the internet" moment?