Surprise!

Things are going so well in Iraq that the one person who still says we're winning has to travel there in secrecy.

Iraqi state television reported Thursday that Vice President Dick Cheney was in Baghdad, but U.S. officials said Cheney was not in the capital.

State-run Iraqiya TV and the private Al-Arabiya TV station reported that Cheney had arrived in the Iraqi capital on Thursday morning, apparently to visit American troops for the Thanksgiving holiday.

But Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said that the vice president was not in Iraq "as far as we know."

Let's not pretend that Bush administration officials don't announce their visits for the same reason parents don't tell their children what's inside the packages under the Christmas tree. The secrecy is for security reasons, not because Cheney plans to pop out of a cake.

There's a measure of the state of Iraq worth watching for: whether administration officials feel confident enough to announce their visits/photo-ops in advance.

This administration is such a fucking joke.