I guess he thinks he deserves a gold star

Bush and Cheney Tell 9/11 Panel of '01 Warnings
. . . Mr. Bush appeared before reporters in the Rose Garden and described the question-and-answer session with the 10 members of the bipartisan commission as 'very cordial.' He said he 'answered every question that they asked.'"
Nice to see what a chummy time Bush and Cheney had with the 9.11 commissioners. Typically, at the press conference afterwards, both he and the media were totally focused on how he felt about the experience and how many questions he answered -- no solemn reference at all to the tragedy of 9.11 itself.
And I got a chuckle out of how proud Bush was about answering all the questions. What did he think, that the commission would ask him something that Gonzales would advise him not to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination? Like -- why did you freeze and sit in the school for seven minutes after being told that the nation was under attack?

Giving Fallujah to a man with a mustache

Marines Plan Handoff To Militia in Fallujah
So they're actually doing it, they're declaring victory and leaving.
And they are putting in charge one of the generals who fought against them just a year ago. Unacknowledged in the article is the fact that once the Americans are gone, the insurgency will end anyway.
So it this one works, I wonder if the whole of Iraq will be turned over to some man with a mustache on June 30.

The last word on the medals thing

Watch Did John Kerry throw something over a fence 30 years ago? The public needs to know" -- I particularly liked the bit on how Bush's certificate in the national guard mile high club compares to Kerry's bronze star, silver star and three purple hearts.

Media Clowns

Daily Howler hits the nail right on the head in his column today about the press corps coverage of Kerry's medals thing and the peanut butter thing, not to mention previous mentions of the botox thing, the hairstyle thing, etc etc
Their focus on trivia is an addiction --a raging, millionaire's mental illness. Their opinion leaders are multimillionaires, and they do behave like a perfumed court- like Marie Antoinette's inner circle. As they've long shown, they are impervious to serious thought, as their class has always been. And they continue to clown at a dangerous time, at a time that imperils the world."
On Hardball last night, Matthews asked Bill Mayer about the medals thing and Mayer responded "Why are you covering this?" Matthews' face showed he was taken aback at first, he thought Mayer was joking. When he realized that Mayer was serious, he didn't have any defense. Here's the somewhat-edited transcript:
MATTHEWS: Bill Maher, what do you make of this fight over whether he threw ribbons or medals in 1971, a third of a century ago?
BILL MAHER, HOST, “REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER”: Why are you covering this? Why are you taking this bait, seriously? Why are you even letting them bait you into covering this complete nonissue? This guy has medals. This guy has ribbons. The other guy didn‘t go. That‘s the whole story.
The other guy is a draft dodger. They were both rich kids in the ‘60s. One of them went to where the bullets were flying and one of them found a way not to go and then he lied about that. Stop covering the medals.
MATTHEWS: All right, I did have to cover it because he had a lot to say last night. Apparently, John Kerry wanted to go on and make clear something where he—maybe he should have shut up about it, but he wanted to make clear that he was being truthful because he said medals and ribbons mean the same to a guy who actually served in the military.
MAHER: Look, one guy went into the National Guard, which back then was a way of getting out of it. .. .
MATTHEWS: Well, he did say in a recent press conference with everyone watching—apparently, 30 million people watched this press conference recently—the president was asked if he ever made any mistakes, and he said he hadn‘t made any.
MAHER: He was drunk until he was 40. That‘s not a mistake?. . .
MATTHEWS: Well, why is he going up in the polls? We got a Pew Research poll. We could show you any poll. They all show him moving up, where he was behind. So what is President Bush doing the last month that‘s so good and what‘s so bad, I guess you would have to say, about John Kerry‘s performance the last month or so? What‘s going on?
MAHER: Well, for one thing, he‘s getting the media to cover this nonsense about John Kerry‘s medals. So Joe Public, as President Bush would call him, sits home and goes, well, gosh, there was a controversy with Bush‘s military history and now there‘s a controversy with John Kerry‘s military history. I don‘t know who to vote for. It‘s nonsense. It is nonsense. One guy actually has honor and integrity, although I will admit that John Kerry certainly is not burdened with charisma, and the other guy only has the words honor and integrity. He‘s never connected them to anything. And he never connects anything
MATTHEWS: What can John Kerry do? Life is unfair, as Jack Kennedy once said, but what happens when you have got a guy like George Bush who may be a swell, who may have gotten breaks to get into Yale, breaks certainly to get into the National Guard, all his life were breaks, maybe to make a ton of money with a baseball team? But he comes off, fairly or not, as sort of a regular guy, whereas John Kerry, who was the balls-out guy, went to war, did the job for the country, won the three—earned, you would have to say, the three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, saved lives, killed the enemy, he comes off as kind of cold. And then the American people are like thermometers. If the guy is warm, they like him. If he‘s cold, they don‘t. Is that fair?
MAHER: And, also, this is something I said before, but I think it bears repeating in this instance to your question. The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people.
George Bush has $180 million to spend. With that kind of money, he could convince Americans to drink paint, and he probably will.
. . . I‘m just saying, with enough money, you can convince people of anything. And that is what George Bush does. He is one of the most cynical presidents we‘ve ever had, I believe, because with that kind of money, he plays on people‘s fears, he plays on people‘s ignorance, and he plays on people‘s shortsightedness . . . you know, in the days before television, people didn‘t judge presidents on whether he was sunny or warm or likable. They judged on whether he was the best man for the job. I would like to bring that criteria back now that we‘re at war.
MATTHEWS: It must be great not to have to be fair and balanced, Bill.
Thank you very much, Bill Maher. Good luck.
Notice that Matthews really does know the difference between the Bush record and the Kerry record, but then recoils from where this leads by talking about how people "like" Bush -- actually, millions of Americans distrust him and dislike him intensely, which is why democratic turnout at the primaries was over the top. Then right at the end, he gave Maher a little dig, implying that RNC talking points need to be given airtime so that the media can prove it is "fair and balanced".

How comforting to blame it all on Saddam

Hussein's Agents Are Behind Attacks in Iraq, Pentagon Finds
Do they actually believe this? Its both simplistic and stupid, but the headline and the article both state this as though these are proven facts, rather than wishful thinking.
I don't doubt that the Iraq army is now active in the resistance, but I think this report is actually aimed at giving Bush and Rumsfield and Cheny a set of talking points for the increasing numbers of American journalists and citizens who are questioning the war.
Here's the key paragraph:
The report also illustrates how Hussein loyalists are manipulating dissatisfaction with the occupation and cultivating a climate of fear that did not vanish with Mr. Hussein's capture. Policy makers who have read the document say it underscores their concerns that a pervasive fear that allowed Mr. Hussein to rule his nation is, even today, deterring millions of Iraqis from supporting the American-led occupation. The pacification of Iraq cannot succeed without the consent and participation of a larger number of Iraqis, according to officials on Capitol Hill and within the administration.
So the American people can rest easy that the failure of Iraq is not the fault of anyone in Washington, or the inept management of the occupation by the Pentagon, or understaffing in the army, or torture by troops in the prisons, or the destruction of Iraq's economy, or US inability to get the electricity running, or the overall disrespect shown to the Iraq people -- no, no, its really all Hussein's fault, you see, and that's why things are going so badly!

A banana for the gorilla

Martin will sign U.S. missile-warning program Maybe I could be accused of a cynical approach, but personally, I have no problem with this. Its smoke and mirrors -- the missile defense system doesn't work and isn't likely to improve much in the future. But, in the meantime, it gives us an opportunity to cooperate with the Bush Administration on something that is near and dear to their hearts. Tthe 400-lb gorilla next door has to be thrown the occasional banana.

Revisionist present

Gadhafi has remade himself and revised his presence in the world. Gadhafi wraps up landmark trip Twenty years ago, Gadhafi was the Great Evil One; now he is the new golden boy of the Middle East. Maybe he has changed, I don't know -- but maybe he looked at what happened when Hussein was identified as the Great Evil One. And maybe he decided that with Hussein out of the picture, the Middle East was due for a new leader, and it might as well be him. And maybe he realized that he could take over from Egypt as the power broker in the region, and also in Africa, if he made nice with the Europeans, also with the benefit of making some money through international investment. And look how eager everyone has been to believe him now. Its an instructive transformation, but I wonder how trustworthy.

Kerry fights back

Two great posts on LiberalOasis "Beltway Dems: Shut Up" and "It has been brung" -- about how well Kerry is responding to the RNC attacks, and how his jobs message is going over in Ohio. Great stuff!

Greedy buggers

CNEWS - Canada: Three new suits against widow of Quebec pilot who crashed into tower
This is pathetic -- so one lawyer has this billiant idea to sue this poor woman, then everyone else piles on so they don't get left out of the windfall. Look guys, you build a huge tower like this in the middle of nowhere, and the risk of someone flying into it is just the risk you take, like being hit by lightening. But because she got a $1 million insurance policy, which at today's interest rates will generate an income for her of maybe $3,000 a month, you think you can squeeze more blood from this stone.
She should countersue the bunch of you, for putting the tower in a place where her husband's plane would hit it! I cannot think of a judge who wouldn't be sympathetic to her.

Thanks but really, you shouldn't have

Globe and Mail: Clark slams Harper So, let's see -- Mulroney has endorsed Harper, and Joe Clark has endorsed Martin. I'll bet both Paul and Steven are so grateful! Personally, I think both Mulroney and Clark are OK, but so many Canadians dislike both of them that the endorsements could turn out to be poison pills. For Harper, its like being endorsed by the mafia; as for Martin, I'll bet he'd rather kiss a duck than say thanks to Clark. A sincere "you really shouldn't have" is the honest response.

First Law of Holes

Thanks to Information Clearing House for this great article William Rivers Pitt: Falluja, Najaf and the First Law of Holes
Pitt writes "Anyone who thinks Iraq is a bad situation now should reserve judgment until the end of this week. George W. Bush and his crew have clearly forgotten the First Law of Holes: When you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging. If this is what Bush meant when he talked about 'changing the world' in his recent prime-time press conference, we are all in a great deal of trouble."

Fantasy world

As referenced by TPM, Juan Cole writes about the recent poll which found that 57 out of 100 Americans believe Hussein and Bin Laden were allies, and 45 out of 100 still believe that Hussein had WMDs before the war.
Why would so many Americans cling to patently false beliefs? One can only speculate of course. But I would suggest that the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. If it were accepted that Saddam had virtually nothing to do with al-Qaeda, that he had no weapons of mass destruction (nor any significant programs for producing them), and that no evidence for such things has been uncovered after the US and its allies have had a year to comb through Baath documents-- if all that is accepted, then President Bush's credibility would suffer. For his partisans, it is absolutely crucial that the president retain his credibility. Therefore, rather than face reality, they re-jigger it to create a fantasy world in which Saddam and Usamah are buddies . . . and in which David Kay . . . never recanted his earlier belief that the WMD was there somewhere. Of those who maintain that Iraq actually did have WMD, 72% say they are going to vote for Bush.
So no wonder Bush refuses to admit making any mistakes, when so many people still believe that such a straight-talking President would tell them only the truth.

US has shot itself in the foot, internationally-speaking

Peter Galbraith's article How to Get Out of Iraq points out how a three-state federal system in Iraq is likely the only workable form of government for this country (as I talked about a couple of weeks ago, too.) Galbraith goes on to talk about the importance of internationalizing the effort.
Only with his conclusion do I have a problem. He writes thatIraq demonstrates all too clearly the folly of the preventive war doctrine and of unilateralism. Of course the United States must reserve the right to act alone when the country is under attack or in imminent danger of attack. But these are also precisely the circumstances when the United States does not need to act alone and he goes on to talk about the continuing worldwide support for the war in Afganistan.
But Afganistan was before Iraq, and before a host of other American foreign-policy blunders -- ham-handed favouritsm for Sharon, self-serving tolerance for Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, clumsy feints with North Korea, confusion over Taiwan/China issues, and stunningly poor WMD intellegence. No other nation now would actually believe any claim by the Bush Administration about an imminent threat, nor would we trust the US to lead any international effort again. So the US is truely on its own now.

Crazy like a fox

Buzzflash thinks Kerry should take the offensive on the smear campaign Editorial: Galling smears But I think Kerry is running a Matrix campaign -- he is letting his opponents exhaust themselves, and, by their increasingly bizarre smear campaigns, make themselves look ridiculous. I think Kerry knows its a long, long time to November, and the majority of the American public won't really be paying a lot of attention to politics until mid-September.
By then, I think it is likely that Bush will be defeating himself:
- the situation in Iraq will likely have continued to deteriorate, with another 200 to 300 soldiers dead, more cities declaring themselves "free", more car bombs, more pipeline fires, more talk of a military draft, etc, and Bush will have been forced to go to Congress for more money for Iraq and Afganistan
- the 9/11 Commission report will produce a public howl for high-profile resignations at the FBI and the CIA
- the Phlame investigation will do likewise to Cheney's staff
- interest rates will have risen enough to endanger any economic recovery, there will be another few million unemployed, and the housing market in the States will begin a freefall.
- the lack of progress on any of the Bush "initiatives" like the gay marriage amendment, the Mexican immigration plan, the trip to Mars etc will be even more glaringly obvious
- And Bush will continue to try to run as the "war president", a position which may become increasingly hollow when he is no longer technically "in charge" in Iraq. And I'll bet Kerry is hoping that Bush succeeds in capturing Bin Laden, which would further undercut the "war president" image -- the public will ask who he is still "at war" against once Bin Laden is gone.

Blame the victim

Bush's Decision on Possible Attack on Falluja Seems Near
This worries me -- "Mr. Bremer . . . [warned] on Friday that 'Iraq faces a choice.' His message was that the country could miss its best chance to establish a democratic government, and he used a starkly grimmer tone than his usual upbeat message about life returning to normal."
Does this foreshadow a new talking point, that the bloody mess in Fallujah and the subsequent failure to establish a democracy in Iraq is going to be blamed on Iraqis, rather than on the Bush administration?