Drool Fest 2007! Ten military bloggers got a special briefing from the President after his prime-time speech Iraq last week.

In this meeting, Ward Carroll of Military.com said the president seemed more comfortable with his message than on TV. We’re led to believe Bush’s becomes articulate when surrounded by hand-picked pro-Bush and pro-war supporters probably because he can say “Scrabble-ma-jangles” without judgment.

Carrol described the President’s performance in front of the blogger round-table:

“No deer-in-the-headlights stuff here. Truly unwavering and passionate.”

Apparently, the standard for unwavering presidential passion has been boiled down to looking less like a fawn frozen before its slaughter than one usual does.

Facts on the ground notwithstanding, he believes the United States can win the Iraq War. And to be honest, being around him made me believe it at that moment too.”

I would hate for facts to withstand the thrall of the President’s most recent victory pep rally among the loyal.

Source: President Reaches Out to a Friendly Circle in New Media [WaPo]

Condi tells Congress that it’s the ‘motion of the ocean’ that matters.

Any questions about the judgment of those running the executive branch should be put to rest as attention turns to the salvaging of legacies. A piece in today’s New York Times looks at a relatively unphased, if not completely culpable, member of the Bush administration’s ecforts to sace her place in history. Though Condoleeza Rice will probably prove more adept at this particular task than George Bush, posterity will unlikely remember what most of these people do after January 2009. No matter how reformed an image Condi puts forth in the coming years, the most indluential years are behind her, culminating in her 2003 statement, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” The fact that no such cloud would ever have been possible will be lost on no one.

In her last months as Secretary of State, Condi is trying to turn her record around by focusing on Arab-Israeli peace and containment of North Korea, doing the kind of work that could easily have been achieved in the first months of 2001, when diplomacy was replaced by arrogance and delusion. These current efforts and xertaibl welcomed and long overdue, but sadly for Condi’s legacy, too little too late on issues too peripheral to the damage she helped wreak. For Rice, as well as for Bush and whoever else associated with this White House seeks redemption, only a realistic look at Iraq, acceptance of responsibility and a concerted effort to extricate American combat forces would give these players a chance not to be completely rebuked by history. Anything less is more of the same.

Our good friend the Liberal Avenger just posted this mind-fuck of a YouTube clip of Dick Cheney talking about the dangers of invading Iraq as he reflects on the Gulf War in a 1994 AEI interview.

Thanks, Dick. Your presience on this issue kept us out of what you call the “quagmire” that would have been a “US occupation” of Iraq for 9 more years… until what must be your the other of your two personalities, the evil one we presume, went ahead and created a “quagmire” that is the “US occupation” of Iraq. Thanks for the wisdom, you evil, terrifyingly evil bastard.

President Bush contends the Saudi military needs upgrading

This is rich. According to the New York Times, President Shitforbrains is getting ready to ask Congress to give Saudi Arabia $20 billion in new military hardware, paid out steadily over the next 10 years. This would include all kinds of satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to fighters and all kinds of other fancy shit so’s our friends in the House of Saud can continue to spread freedom in the Middle East.

It’s a shame that President Chim Cim doesn’t read his intelligence reports or, you know, the newspaper from time to time. Were he to glance at one, he might have noticed this item in the LA Times a couple of weeks ago, or this one from the New York Times. Or this one, from, er, Editor and Publisher.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis[.]

Yeah, man, go right ahead, arm the fuck out of our “friends” or “allies” or whatever - pretty sure it can’t get any worse over there. Or hey, how about this. Just take your pick of a landmark or airport or whatever some terrorist cell might want to blow up and just go ahead and do it yourself?

Featured Song: “Death to Our Friends” by Sonic Youth

So a missing American soldier turned up in the Euphrates along with 800 gajillion Iraqi bodies. I hate to say it, but its like, did they just start looking there? You could clear up every homicide-missing person-genocide case by dipping a toe in that floating graveyard (as we mentioned before.)

River Tigris went from being the craddle of civilization to the graveyard of Baghdad. IRIN, a humanitarian news agency, reports a massive volume of floating bodies all along the Tigris.

The situation is even worse in Suwayrah, a southern area of the capital, where the government has built barriers with huge iron nets to trap plants and garbage dropped in the river but now this is also a barrier for bodies.

Under Saddam, people were punished for throwing trash in the river. (Probably severely punished.) Today mountains of trash line the banks. More bad news? Massive mud islands appear in the ever-more-shallow river during dry seasons. It’s great how U.S. reconstruction contractors can’t be trusted to build a sound police headquarters, and, like, restoring the Tigris would be way harder. [Source]

P.S. Wouldn’t this be an amazing TV news story? Post if you see it covered anywhere in the mainstream media.

The John McCain running for president today is a completely different John McCain who was running for president yesterday. John had some catching up to on things he’s forgotton to criticize over the past six years:

My friends, we all know the war in Iraq has not gone well…

…When Americans confront a catastrophe, natural or man-made, they have a right to expect basic competence from their government. They won’t accept that firemen and policemen are unable to communicate with each other in an emergency because they don’t have the same radio frequency…

…They won’t accept government’s failure to deliver bottled water to dehydrated babies or rescue the infirm from a hospital with no electricity. They won’t accept substandard care and indifference for our wounded veterans…

Iraq, 911, Katrina… Way to get caught up on world events. Jackass. [LAT, text of speech]