Wasn't "Mission Accomplish" an artificial timetable?

George W. Bush says he'll veto an Iraq funding bill tomorrow because it includes a plan for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq soon. In a press conference last week, he said:

An artificial timetable of withdrawal would say to an enemy, just wait them out; it would say to the Iraqis, don't do hard things necessary to achieve our objectives; and it would be discouraging for our troops. And therefore I will strongly reject an artificial timetable withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.

Bush's veto will fall on the fourth anniversary of his memorable proclamation of the end of combat operations in Iraq. "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," he said. Four years have passed, 2,808 U.S. troops have been killed, and more than 35,000 Iraqi citizens have died since then. If this is the natural course of victory, I'll take an artificial timetable any day.

"Why I Was Fired."

David Iglesias, one of the eight attorneys general asked to resign by the Bush Administration, writes an op-ed in today's New York Times on his path from a prosecutor with a 95% conviction rate to an out-of-work AG. In part:

I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.

Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges — the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about — before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, “I am very sorry to hear that,” and the line went dead.

A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign...

And Yahoo reports that "six of the eight U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department ranked in the top third among their peers for the number of prosecutions filed last year."

Meanwhile, George W. Bush says he'll oppose efforts to subpoena top aides to testify on their role in what appears to be politicized firings of the AG's. His rationale? He doesn't want the case to become -- wait for it -- a "partisan fishing expedition."

GOP will kill antiterror bill if it includes union language

Love America, hate the worker:

President Bush and his Senate allies will kill a Sept. 11 antiterror bill if Congress sends it to the White House with a provision to let airport screeners unionize, the White House and 36 Republicans said Tuesday."As the legislation currently stands, the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

Senate Republicans swiftly backed up the threat with a pledge by more than enough senators to block any veto override attempt.

"If the final bill contains such a provision, forcing you to veto it, we pledge to sustain your veto," they wrote to the president.

Purple Heart-winning amputee told not to wear shorts at Bush event

Support our troops? From the Washington Post's explosive expose on conditions at Walter Reed:

Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.

" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "

David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

ThinkProgress has more.

Spank.

A float depicting U.S. President George W. Bush being spanked by the Statue Of Liberty passes by during the Rose Monday carnival parade in Mainz, western Germany, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2007. Thousands of spectators attended the traditional street carnival parade in the state of Rhineland-Palatinates’s capital. (AP Photo/Bernd Kammerer)

Fuzzy math.

In 2000, George W. Bush repeatedly referred to the "fuzzy math" Al Gore used in explaining the costs of government programs.

How's this for fuzzy: the war the Bush administration priced out at $50 billion is now pushing the $360,000,000,000 mark (remember when Bush fired economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, in part for predicting the war would top $200 billion?).

The new estimate for the Iraq war: $1.2 trillion.

Surge? Escalation? Neither.

Jon Stewart's got a point: Bush's plan to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq isn't a "surge," nor is it an "escalation."

It raises the number of American soldiers to "levels to what they were two years ago, when we couldn't secure Baghdad." (Fast-forward to 3:59)

More on the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration

What a disheartening illustration of the Bush administration's perspective on American values of justice. From the Washington Post:

MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way. Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. In a repellent interview yesterday with Federal News Radio, Mr. Stimson brought up, unprompted, the number of major U.S. law firms that have helped represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"Actually you know I think the news story that you're really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there,' and you know what, it's shocking," he said.

Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."

Asked who was paying the firms, Mr. Stimson hinted of dark doings. "It's not clear, is it?" he said. "Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they're doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving monies from who knows where, and I'd be curious to have them explain that."

It might be only laughable that Mr. Stimson, during the interview, called Guantanamo "certainly, probably, the most transparent and open location in the world."

But it's offensive -- shocking, to use his word -- that Mr. Stimson, a lawyer, would argue that law firms are doing anything other than upholding the highest ethical traditions of the bar by taking on the most unpopular of defendants. It's shocking that he would seemingly encourage the firms' corporate clients to pressure them to drop this work. And it's shocking -- though perhaps not surprising -- that this is the person the administration has chosen to oversee detainee policy at Guantanamo.

One speech, four networks

During tonight's speech by Bush, three networks ran the identical on-screen super: "Presidential Address on Iraq." PBS was even more declarative: "Live from the White House Library." Long accused of coziness with the White House's communications team, here's how the local Fox affiliate tagged the speech:

A trickle or a surge?

If all goes as planned, I'll be interviewing St. John's University Communications professor Dr. Richard Ice in an hour or so about the rhetoric and stagecraft Bush employs in his speech tonight. For prep, I'm wondering about the sudden appearance of this word "surge" to describe the president's planned deployment of 21,500 additional troops in Iraq? The term, obviously, has an active, almost optimistic (and, may I point out, temporary) ring to it--like waves crashing on an unsuspecting (wimpy, third-world) beach--and it doesn't carry the connotations its Vietnamy synonym, "escalation," does.

The Columbia Journalism Review says "surge" is "President Bush's word, a descriptor that at the very least belongs within quotations. So far, so good. It seems that a history of being burned by insufficient skepticism of the Bush administration and its policies has taught journalists and editors to put nearly everything in quotes."

Yes, but will the press stop using the term, sans quotes, should Bush's master plan involve a protracted or gradual addition of troops--an "escalation," if you will--instead of a massive and overwhelming spike in military resources?

Osama at large: not a failure but "a success that hasn't occurred yet"

I guess I'm succeeding at more things than I realized; it's just that the success hasn't happened yet. From TPMmuckracker (via TDI):

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden is still at large -- but that's not a failure of White House policy, says Frances Fragos Townsend. As she explained to CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry last night:

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

Bush Administration bans estimates of Grand Canyon's age

UPDATE: As commenters suggest and Alternet confirms, this story is bogus. Apologies, fundies.

Science 0, Fundamentalist Christians 1:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

Read more.

Found

Toronto street art. "Bush = Hitler" is (still) a stretch, but...

The Military-Industrial Complex, verbalized. (Or, shop the war away.)

George W. Bush, at his much-touted final press conference of 2006, made some startling statements, including his first admission that "We're not winning [in Iraq], we're not losing." But the kicker comes at the end. From the CBC's coverage:

He said the most painful part of his presidency has been knowing that American soldiers die as a result of his decisions. His "heart breaks" for their families, he said....

...Although he said the war will require additional sacrifices, he called for no sacrifices on the home front.

"A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country," he told the reporters, "and I encourage you all to go shopping more."

(Thanks, Tom. Photo: Christopher Morris)