Was this the week when Bertie blew it? It certainly must have been sobering for the Taoiseach to find so many so ready to believe that he had. Regular fans puked over their cornflakes as they read that Sunday Times interview.
"No power-sharing before arms handover, Ahern tells Sinn Fein", screamed the headline - proclaiming a powerful heresy to those convinced that decommissioning was but an Orange herring, soon to be discarded in an inevitable Ulster Unionist U-turn.
Had the Taoiseach lost the plot? Had the pressure of other events finally got to him? Those inclined to think so were hardly discouraged by Charlie McCreevy's doubtless kindly suggestion that his leader was "too open" and "far too helpful" when dealing with journalists.
The Finance Minister's main preoccupation was plainly with those events still closer to the heart of this Government. But the timing of his remarks - while the Taoiseach was out of the country - fuelled the impression that Mr Ahern had got himself into difficulty by being far too accommodating to a British newspaper perhaps insufficiently skilled in the nuances of the situation in Northern Ireland.
Ah, the wicked press. Seamus Mallon appeared to be playing something of the same tune 48 hours on, noting on RTE that Mr Ahern's interview had been "question-driven". What we were meant to deduce from that - save that journalist Liam Clarke had been doing his job properly - was not at all clear.
But the Taoiseach was. In Paris on Monday he summarily dismissed Mr McCreevy's suggestion with the assertion: "I didn't put a foot wrong in that interview." The following day in the Dail he told John Bruton: "I do not detract from what I said in the article in the Sunday Times. It is all available on the Internet."
Indeed, it was. Straight off, Mr Ahern said: "Our view is that decommissioning in one form or another has to happen. I am on record . . . as saying it is not compatible with being part of a government - I mean part of an executive - that there is not at least a commencement of decommissioning."
Expressing the hope that some "construct" could be found under General de Chastelain to resolve the issue, Mr Ahern continued: "The big challenge is decommissioning vs the executive, but it is my view and the view of all those who are working with me that we are not going to get David Trimble to agree to the establishment of an executive or the formulation of the executive until we actually deal with the decommissioning issue in some form, even if that is in some fairly minor way."
Confirming "yes" - the practical politics of the situation are that, whatever the agreement says, there can be no executive without a start to decommissioning - Mr Ahern listed the progress made on other fronts, before describing the republican position on decommissioning as "illogical and unfair and unreasonable". He went on: "You can't prioritise and bring forward, and incrementally do everything, and then say we won't even start on the first 0.001 per cent of this issue."
Pressed to say if he meant "a start to the destruction of weapons and a commitment to continue", the Taoiseach replied: "Yeah. People say `does that mean physical, does that mean Semtex, does that mean guns?' It means the principle has to be accepted and that then whatever modalities are worked out by de Chastelain, because that is (his) expertise to work out how it actually happens, and that is what we mean."
To Liam Clarke's mind - and in a view echoed by an editorial in this newspaper on Tuesday - "only one interpretation is possible, and that is that Sinn Fein should not be admitted to an executive until a start had been made on decommissioning. The rest is detail, not ambiguity."
During those subsequent exchanges in the Dail the only ambiguity the Taoiseach would concede derived from the headlines carrying early-morning radio and television reports of his interview. Lifting the word from the first paragraph of the front-page Sunday Times story, those headlines had Mr Ahern proposing that Sinn Fein should be "barred" from the executive unless the IRA had first decommissioned.
The purpose of that Sunday lunchtime clarification was to make it clear that the Taoiseach had never used the word "barred", and that he certainly was not suggesting that the creation of the executive could or should proceed without Sinn Fein. That, of course, is David Trimble's position. The Taoiseach's position, as defined this week, is that if there is to be an executive it must be fully inclusive - but that there will not be one save in "the wider context of everybody's view that decommissioning would be part of the agreement and would incrementally move on under a construction under de Chastelain". Indeed, in one of the most striking passages in the interview, Mr Ahern insists that it is in this context - and not in the "narrow" context of Mr Trimble's declared position - that the issue should be addressed.
The Taoiseach, it must be said, has a certain way with words. And, like many another prime minister, he has, too, that capacity to leave opposing factions happy and content in the belief that he is basically on their side.
But for all Martin McGuinness's protestations that the Sun- day Times's account of Mr Ahern's thinking was "completely inaccurate", we may take it that reports of "gloom, concern and puzzlement in the republican camp" are, if anything, an understatement. For the Taoiseach has dramatically increased the pressure on the republican movement and, by his own word, deliberately and consciously so. He and his advisers having had ample opportunity to take the temperature and assess reaction, Mr Ahern agreed with Mr Bruton on Tuesday that he had been "stepping up this matter and the article was a means of doing that". On the back of which we can discount a bizarre claim which emanated from within the Government this week, and found its way into Tuesday's Irish News, to the effect that a solution to the decommissioning impasse had been but a "whisker away" before the controversy generated by Mr Ahern's interview.
We have the Taoiseach's word for it - that there is and has been no disparity or discrepancy between Sinn Fein's public and private position on decommissioning. Indeed, the indications are that, in their most recent meetings with the Government, Sinn Fein's position has if anything hardened. So, too, has the Taoiseach's.
Back in December, in this newspaper's end-of-year review, we noted the concern in some quarters that the Government's willingness to indulge Mr Trimble, and to let various "deadlines" fall, might inadvertently have helped entrench the UUP leader in the decommissioning ditch. In the past week we have seen Mr Trimble's ditch dug still deeper - and the Taoiseach join him in it!