The traveling press corps plays “Who’s On First, What’s On Second” with an unnamed “senior assministration official” over the question of who cancelled yesterday’s Abdullah-Bush-Maliki meeting, when it was cacelled, and why it was cancelled.

Q Have you gotten any clearer understanding of who made the decision not to make it a trilateral? I mean, did King Abdullah suggest it to Prime Minister Maliki, or did Prime Minister Maliki make the decision unilaterally?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, the one word answer is, no. I can tell you that when the President made the decision — or actually, it wasn’t even a decision a few days ago when the idea arose — of coming here after Riga, it was always a bilateral dinner. I can tell you that. It was always a bilateral dinner, and that was well understood.
I don’t know when the idea — the trilateral idea came up, but it was pretty clear from the dinner, I think, that both of them felt they — you know, there are three bilateral meetings here, which cover all the bases — President-King, King-Maliki, President-Maliki. So everybody gets to have these bilateral conversations and go into all the depth they want, and I guess they just concluded there was no need for a trilat.
Q Did the King of Jordan —
Q — who, that’s my question.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I can only —
Q Did the President Holden in Jordan believing that he was going to a meeting this evening?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No.
Q Did he leave —
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t believe so.
Q Did he leave Riga believing that he was going to be meeting —
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I wasn’t here, I can’t answer that.
Q When was the White House informed that Maliki would not be attending the dinner tonight?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can’t answer. I can only tell you that there was a good — there was a broad feeling that a trilateral was really not necessary.
The comedy continues…
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