Whoops:

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

"The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank," a senior administration official told McClatchy's Jonathan Landay. That would seem to be the larger theme here.