Quote Of The Day

Not only is President Bush keeping atop the reports of Tropical Storm Gustav, but the White House press office is keeping atop efforts to report that he is keeping atop the reports.

James Gerstenzang blogs for the LA Times (H/T Dan Froomkin)

Dividing Iraq

This needs no further comment...

Big Oil and Iraq

In the Boston Globe yesterday...

IT TOOK five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon. It is the inescapable open question since the reasons given by President Bush for the invasion and occupation did not exist, neither the weapons of mass destruction nor Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Ouch!

Success In Iraq

At last, Bush and Cheney can (privately) toast the complete success of Operation Iraqi Liberation Freedom.

,,,, See No Evil, ...

Dana Perino at Windsor

Where's Wally

Stephen Colbert reminds us that we never did find out where George W Bush went, after the swift-boating of Dan Rather.

Hanging On

Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes the point that George Bush is just trying to hang on to pass the problem of Iraq on to his successor.

Any claim that President Bush is committed to victory in Iraq is contradicted by the facts. He is instead committing us to slow defeat, a defeat timed to come after he leaves office, on another president's watch so another president takes blame.

And if the current president has to purchase another 20 months in Iraq with the lives and limbs of our soldiers, and with the continued degradation of a military that we may need again in the not-so-distant future — well, he is apparently willing to make that deal.

All the evidence supports this view as he goes on to explain.

If Bush had been truly committed to victory, he would have paid the price for it. Sometime in the past five years, he would have found the hundreds of thousands of additional troops our generals have said from the beginning that they needed to succeed.

Being truly committed to winning also would have meant not just sending our military off to war, which was easy. It would have meant sending this nation to war as well, which was hard and something the president has never dared ask of the American people. For most of us, this is a war in which other people fight and die, and that other people will pay for. Under the president's leadership, we have become the only generation in U.S. history so selfish that we gave ourselves major tax cuts while our kids were fighting and dying, and for that we ought to be ashamed.

Most of all, a commitment to winning would have required taking the war effort seriously. It was not. It was not seriously planned, it was not seriously considered, it has not been seriously fought. And as a result, we find ourselves in a terrible dilemma.

H/T to Dan Froomkin's excellent White House Watch.

Political Overreach

So you don't have to be associated with a terrorist organisation, you don't have to have committed any crimes, you don't even have to look suspicious. No all you have to do is be critical of George W. Bush!

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said."

So what is exactly the point of this action? Is it to intimidate opponents? Is it a punishment for daring to speak out in opposition? Is this what the 'leader of the free world' has come to?

I would imagine that the airlines will be complaining if the Department of Homeland Security are going to want to ban two thirds of their potential passengers.

The Hicks Farce

Andrew Sullivan nails it with his summary of the David Hicks plea and sentence:

If you think this was in any way a legitimate court process, you're smoking something even George Michael would pay a lot of money for. It was a political deal, revealing the circus that the alleged Gitmo court system really is. For good measure, Hicks has a gag-order imposed so that he will not be able to speak of his alleged torture and abuse until after Howard faces re-election. Yes, we live in a banana republic. It certainly isn't a country ruled by law. It is ruled by one man and his accomplice.

That's Cheney, and his junior accomplice Bush.

Plan 'B'? There is no Plan 'B'.

The Cunning Realist highlights the fact.

During a White House meeting last week, a group of governors asked President Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about their backup plan for Iraq. What would the administration do if its new strategy didn't work?

The conclusion they took away, the governors later said, was that there is no Plan B. "I'm a Marine," Pace told them, "and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."

Wishful thinking hasn't worked before and it doesn't look like it will work now.