Ironic, Don't You Think? Dan Shaughnessy claims Pete Rose is selfish, has shown "no evidence of contrition" and loves money more than baseball. In short, he "doesn't get it." Okay, fair enough. But check this out: "The motivation for his admission is obvious: He wants to make money. He has 500,000 books waiting to be bought. Rose needed a good hook to command that kind of press run. ..." ... Oh, man. Shaughnessy hypes (or alludes to) his own best-selling tome in approximately every other column. Indeed, he did it in this one. The column leads off: "Here's the deal: When the ground ball trickles between the legs of the first baseman -- allowing the winning run to cross the plate in a World Series game -- absolutely no one wonders whether the game is on the level. There's no wild speculation that the fix is in. It's just an error, a physical mistake made by a human being." ... Coincidentally, that "physical mistake" was the event that led Shaughnessy to write and publish his book. A picture of that error is prominently featured on the paperback's cover. ... What are the odds?

Doodles of Mass Destruction. Headline in the WP: "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper." Check out the scary weapons plans here. ... Meanwhile, the DoD reports up to 22,000 US casualties in Iraq. Not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis corpses, although no one knows the true total. The Defense Dept. says: ''They don't count. They are not important.'' And the cost of the war nears $100,000,000,000.