Fact-esque

And I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, Hamas won?’

Faithful readers of this blog know that while the content of Ms. Bumiller's nearly-released and long-anticipated bio of the fabulous Condi has never been in doubt, the title of the work was a matter of frequent speculation around here.

When the news of Ms. Bumiller's leave of absence to write her book broke, I was understandably upset to be losing her contribution to the country's political reporting scene - especially since she wrote the always wonderful White House Letter column, which went on haitus with its creator.  But I dug through the sadness and the Fact-esque archives to come up with a preview of what to expect when the book hit the shelves and, to dull the pain, began to (helpfully) suggest titles for the coming love letter. 

Here are what I came up with:  Condiriffic!;  Devotion: Condi's Story; Condi: A Fabulous Life; (SO close!) and the all-purpose Hero! 

There was Investing in Freedom, the Story of a Girl Diplomat, when she so movingly assured America that Iraq was worth the lives and money that we've "invested" in it. 

Let Me Check with John, when John Negroponte was assigned to be her babysitter at State.

Girl Talk: the True Story of One Woman's Rise to the Heels of Power and What He Meant When He Said That: What it Takes to Stand by Your Man When Your Man is a Moron, when it looked like Marcus Marby would beat Ms. Bumiller to the punch.

And finally, Hiding Truth's Pants: Working in the George W. Bush White House, when yet another Condi bio came out before Ms. Bumiller's - that one snappily entitled Dr. Rice is in the House.

And so after nearly a year of waiting to see what title Ms. Bumiller and her publishers would come up with, you can imagine my crushing disappointment to see that it's Condoleezza Rice: An American Life.   Just awful.  We've already had Reagan: An American Life and Ben Franklin: An American Life.  Madonna even used the cliche.  There is that great radio show This American Life that's been on forever, so that's cool, but I can't shake the fact that when I first read the title of Bumiller's book, all I could think of was that little immigrant mouse, Fievel.  At least he's adorable.

Condoleezza Rice: An American Life doesn't hit the stores until Decemeber 11, but you can get a good idea about what you'll get by reading the adapted excerpts of the book, which ran in the NYT yesterday as news stories just in time to puff both Ms. Bumiller's book and Dear Leader's legacy-seeking Annapolis Peace Talks.  Be charmed as you read about the close friendship between the fabulous Condi and BushCo and how it seems to keep her believing that anyone in the White House pays attention to what she says.  Don't miss the thrilling history of the administration's disastrous handling of the region and how all of the mistakes and calamities have somehow led to Annapolis, where, if the bar is lowered enough and the definition of success completely re-written, a pony will be pulled from the ruins.

Personally, I'm simply hoping that we'll be seeing Ms. Bumiller return to the NYT full time in 2008 in time for the primaries and the general election.   I've missed her.

All the BushCo Cheerleading That's Fit to Print

If you were stunned by David Ignatius' truly horrible ode to our weary boy-king, then don't miss the NYT's Christmas present to our stressed-out but always resolute and sincere Dear Leader:

President Bush marched into his year-end news conference last week with the usual zip in his step. As always, he professed little worry about his legacy or the polls. As always, he said the United States would win in Iraq. The nation might despair, but not Mr. Bush; his presidential armor seemed firmly intact.

Yet a longtime friend of Mr. Bush’s recently spotted a tiny crack in that armor. “He looked tired, for the first time, which I hadn’t seen before,” this friend said.

And it goes on from there, the author, Stohlberg, doing her best imitation of our Ms. Bumiller (currently on leave to write a biography of the Fabulous Condi - working title: Investing in Freedom, the Story of a Girl Diplomat). She even quotes People magazine as she hits all the same notes of concern that Ignatius does for our brave leader, who is now fighting alone the illegal war he started. Alone, that is, if you don't count the thousands of people actually doing the killing and the dying.

The difference? Ignatius' piece was on the op-ed page. The NYT put their love letter in the news.

Dead Again

I was walking around feeling guilty the last several days for not making the time to say farewell to our Ms. Bumiller after her last White House Letter showed up on the last Monday in May.  It was a sweet See You Later to the BushCo family as she speculated on a Jebbie run.   Because that's valuable stuff that is interesting, that she works to get and not just her sort of yammering on about something.   With that she was off to write the definitive biography of Condi, tenatively titled Yes, Mr. President: A Look Inside the Greatest Foreign Policy Mind of All Time (and she's a girl!) 

But it turns out that rumors of Ms. Bumiller's hiatus were greatly exaggerated because what do I see this week but a Bumiller byline on a story that reads suspiciously like a White House Letter, which is to say that it's a People-esque profile of a White House staffer.  But not just any staffer.  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Ms. Bumiller gives you a Gertrude Bell for our time.  Meet Meghan O'Sullivan, Queen of New Iraq.

At the end of each day, President Bush gets a three-to-four-page memo from the National Security Council staff about developments over the previous 24 hours in Iraq. The document, said to be written in the crisp, compelling style that the president prefers, can cover a range of issues — the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, new nominees for cabinet posts or the progress, or lack of it, in ending the three-year insurgency.

The person responsible for the memo is someone who is largely unknown outside the administration, but who colleagues say is instrumental in shaping Mr. Bush's views: Meghan L. O'Sullivan, the 36-year-old deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, and the most senior official working on those nations full time at the White House.

I probably would have let the story go if I hadn't heard Harry Shearer (the original blogger) feature this Reuters story about Gertrude Bell, the first Queen of Iraq, during his May 14th show.

Gertrude Bell, a British traveler, writer and linguist, was one of the most powerful women of the 1920s, an adviser to empire builders and confidante to kings.

An "oriental secretary" to British governments, she is credited with drawing the boundaries of modern Iraq out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One.

I mean, break out the Ouija board, right?

With Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, Ms. O'Sullivan briefs the president in person on Iraq up to several times a week. Over the weekend she helped to prepare the agenda for Mr. Bush's war cabinet meetings on Monday and Tuesday at Camp David and will be on hand throughout the sessions.

Ms. O'Sullivan, who spent more than a year in Baghdad as an aide to L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American civilian administrator in Iraq, also helps to prepare the agenda for the president's weekly National Security Council meetings on Iraq.

She coordinates the political, security and reconstruction efforts for Iraq throughout the agencies of the government. Not least, she briefs the president before all of his phone calls and meetings with Iraqi leaders.

Although Ms. O'Sullivan does not make major decisions — the administration's policy is run by Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — she is important because of her closeness to the president and her role in helping to form his thinking.

Spooky.  But what matters and what is very clear from this comparison is that our blood-thirsty neo-colonialists, seem to have learned nothing at all from the painful lessons of the very recent past. 

Bell and her fellow colonialists settled Iraq's borders by merging the old Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, seeking to secure British interests and with scant regard for tribal and ethnic boundaries.

"I had a well spent morning at the office making out the southern desert frontier of the Iraq," Bell, who specialized in Arabic and Persian languages, wrote to her father in 1921.

What emerged was a centralized state with three peoples with differing aims, ideals and beliefs: non-Arab Kurds in the mountainous north, Shi'ite Muslims in the south and Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and in the rest of the heartland.

In 1958, a group of nationalist military officers ousted the puppet monarchy Bell had helped install in a bogus referendum in 1921 that passed with 96 percent of the vote.

She had also helped draw up many of the policies that were later taken up by Saddam's Baath Party and which exacerbated the centuries-old tensions between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

She ensured that a Sunni elite, previously favored by the Sunni Turks running the Ottoman territories, dominated the new Iraqi government and the army, and that the majority Shi'ites, whom she regarded as religious zealots, remained oppressed.

Kurds were denied self-rule so that London could control Kurdistan's oil fields and build a buffer against the Russians.

"I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil," Bell wrote in another letter.

She ensured a Sunni elite.  That's interesting because if you remember back a year ago, then you know that a Sunni-led government was part of the initial invasion planning.  From a March 8, 2002 Operations Paper released as part of the Downing Street Memos: (emph mine)

In considering the options for regime change below, we need to first consider what sort of Iraq we want?  There are two possibilities:  *A Sunni military strongman.  He would be likely to maintain Iraqi territorial integrity.  Assistance with reconstruction and political rehabilitation could be traded for assurances on abandoning WMD programmes and respecting human rights, particularly of ethnic minorities.  The US and other militaries could withdraw quickly.  However, there would then be a strong risk of the Iraqi system reverting to type.  Military coup could succeed coup until an autocratic, Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests.  With time he coudl acquire WMD;  or * a representative broadly democratic government.  This would be Sunni-led [were these people ever right about anything leading up BushCo's War?] but, within a federal structure, the Kurds would be guaranteed autonomy and the Shia fair access to government.  Such a regime would be less likely to develop WMD and threaten its neighbours.  However, to survivie it would require the US and others to commit to nation building for many years.  This would entail a substantial international security force and help with reconstruction.

In the end, Wolfowitz pushed the Saddam-lite option off the table in favor of "something like a functioning democracy," which isn't described in any real detail but we can assume is something like the second option outlined above.   Now we've got a Shi'a strongman in place presiding over something like the very devil.

Back to the neo-Bell:

One of Ms. O'Sullivan's chief responsibilities in Baghdad was keeping abreast of developments within the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, one of the main Shiite parties. She covered herself from head to toe for meetings with Abdul Aziz Hakim, the party leader, and earned his trust.

At least Bell was able to dress as she chose when she did her job:

Bell, who had an aristocratic upbringing, lived in a more genteel Baghdad than today's city of sandbags, armored vehicles and the bombed-out hulks of Saddam-era government buildings.

She wore long muslin dresses and feathered hats and rode side-saddle along the banks of the Tigris. In her letters, she describes a Baghdad of tea parties, regattas, swimming excursions and luncheons on the verandas of colonial buildings.

The Neo-Bell lives more dangerously:

Ms. O'Sullivan's point of view comes from her intense months in Baghdad, where she had one major harrowing moment. In October 2003, when she was immersed in the negotiations over Iraq's first post-invasion constitution, a rocket hit her hotel in Baghdad. The blast jammed Ms. O'Sullivan's door shut, and she escaped by inching along a narrow ledge outside her 10th-floor window.

She eventually made her way to the Baghdad streets and then her office at Saddam Hussein's former palace on the banks of the Tigris. The explosion killed an American colonel and wounded 16 others.

"It was a dangerous place to live, and I was constantly reminded of that because I had Iraqi friends who were killed," Ms. O'Sullivan said matter-of-factly. "But it's amazing how you can function, and also how much more there is going on in Iraq besides the violence."

Sure, it's dangerous.  Lots of people are getting killed, absolutely.  But there's other stuff to do too.  There's waiting for the water and electricity to come back on, finding bodies in the street, hiding in your home, watching previously safe southern Iraq fall into chaos.  If you're an Iraqi woman, there's all the time you now need to devote to avoiding the violent new oppression that's come your way.  There's a lot going on!

The end of Ms. Bumiller's piece gets a little bit sad, but only if you know the story of Bell.  If you don't, then it reads like the adventure story she seems to have wanted it to be:

She lives not far from the White House, is single and tries not to work seven days a week. Her future is tied to Iraq: her colleagues say she could be national security adviser someday — or something much less.

"The reality is that if Iraq implodes, she'll probably go nowhere," Mr. Diamond said. "Because she will have been associated in an integral way with one of the biggest failures in the history of American foreign policy."

But going nowhere professionally in the field of nation building would be a good outcome for Ms. O'Sulllivan if we're going to use Bell as a yardstick: (emph mine)

But as revolt spread and Britain used bombs and poison gas against those opposed to its presence, she faded from public life.

"We have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can't as yet be reduced to any system," she once said.

Five years before her death from an overdose of sleeping pills aged 57 in 1926, she wrote: "You may rely upon one thing -- I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain."

King making, nation building.  It's all the same in the fog of war:

Ms. O'Sullivan is undaunted. "I'm able to focus on the fact that we're building a relationship with Iraq," she said, "that will have benefits to Iraq and America over the long term."

It's White House Letter Day! Thanks for the Support, Boss!

Until thirty seconds ago, I didn't know what I was going to write about the latest White House Letter or if I would mention it at all.  I've been known to skip a few after all.   Then I saw Glenn Greenwald's post (via Atrios) on Abu Gonzales' naked threat to journalists in which he says straight out that if a journalist is considered to have damaged national security interest (whatever that means) Team BushCo has the right and the obligation to prosecute that journalist.  Okay, that's almost old news.  Certainly we've been building to that announcement anyway.  Here's the truly scary part:

The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

Combined with what Brian Ross and Richard Esposito reported last week, that's as good as an admission that the White House is currently tracking down reporters' phone records expressly for the purpose of sealing leaks.  Or they aren't, but they want to send the message that one never knows what Big Brother is up to or capable of so be careful. 

Hold on, my internal editor says.  You can't have it both ways.  They're bad if they're tracking journalists' calls and they're bad if they aren't.  My internal editor is right.  The White House, if they are only guilty of pretending to be tracking down reporters' calls via their (ineffective and illegal) domestic spying program, is really guilty of nothing worse than punking America. 

If that feels wrong to you, it's because it is wrong.   I'm just saying there's no penalty for the federal government leaking a false confession and sending their top law-talkin' dude out to make empty threats against journalists.   And I'm not going to blame the White House for playing this game, if that is, in fact, what they're doing.  I blame the corporate media for not standing up to it because they are the part of our society that is supposed to protect us against exactly this kind of brinkmanship.  It's their fault that we're failing to make the connections that let us see that the goal isn't to actually arrest any journalists but to create an atmosphere where talking about the federal government arresting journalists for doing their jobs is okay.

If Bill Keller and the rest of the big thinkers in the corporate media heard on Sunday, as we all did, that Abu G. was making noise about arresting journalists for doing their jobs, then he should have been up all night working on a lead editorial or, at the very least, something for his Q&A column, which hasn't been updated since May 9.  You'd think he'd do it for moral building purposes alone.
Can you imagine being a reporter, say James Risen or Eric Lichblau, (or Dana Priest or Leslie Cauley for that matter) and hearing that you're in Abu's crosshairs?  That would be bad enough, I imagine, until you experience the deafening public silence from your editors.    Risen and Lichtblau were even singled out by the mighty Abu again:

Gonzales told ABC that his department is trying to determine "the appropriate court of action" relating to the disclosure by The New York Times about a National Security Agency surveillance program.

The Times reported that the attorney general did not name the statutes but apparently was referring to espionage laws that have never been used to prosecute journalists. The Times said some legal scholars also feel prosecuting reporters under the laws might violate the First Amendment.

It sounds like Keller is in the middle of kicking this one down the road, hoping for the best.  We've seen where that road goes.   It ends up a year later with wistful apologies filled with  if-only-we-had-knowns.  This particular road might be longer than a year but eventually we're going to be living in a country where the suggestion that journalists be wiretapped and arrested for doing their jobs is greeted with delerious applause rather than the apathetic silence it gets from the body politic today.

As for the White House Letter, today  was all about Fox News and whether it is the only White House-approved media outlet .   Elisabeth Bumiller writes about a "new era" dawning when Jim Vandehai asked if FOX were the only station allowed on White House televisions, including Air Force One.   Predictably nobody admits to anything.  No questions are answered.  But in the end the televisions get turned to CNN and Tony Snow engages in some Kabuki with his old FOX friend Carl Cameron.   Ms. Bumiller is elated.   This is what passes for a victory for the corporate media today.

I hope when future journalists are detained for endangering national security, they can remember whom they have to thank when they notice that all the TVs in the brand new Halliburton-built detention facility are tuned to something other than FOX.

It's White House Letter Day!

Don't miss this week's White House Letter.  It's all about Mary Cheney's new book, reviews of which Elisabeth Bumiller has apparently read. 

I have a feeling that Ms. Bumiller has already cleaned out her desk in anticipation of that leave of absence she's going to take starting in June to write "Madame Secretary, the Story of a Fabulous Life."   She's playing way past silly profiles of people tangentially associated with the White House.   I hear next week's letter will  either be about the White House Florist, who is considering retiring earlier than the announced date of January 2007, or the newest sous chef, who is a distant relation of Grover Cleveland.

I can't wait to see which one she picks.

It's White House Letter Day! Legacy or Think Tank Edition.

From an Bob Schieffer interview of Dear Leader apparently leaked to Elisabeth Bumiller:

"I would like to leave behind a legacy or a think tank, a place for people to talk about freedom and liberty, and the de Tocqueville model, what de Tocqueville saw in America," Mr. Bush told Mr. Schieffer. "I would like for there to be a place where young scholars come and write and think and articulate and opine and teach."

And so begins the wondrous journey that will culminate in the George W. Bush Freedom and Liberty Legacy or Think Tank Foundation.  It will be full of young scholars writing and thinking and legacy-ing all over the place about the the BushCo Doctrine of Preemption, what BushCo now modestly refers to as "the de Tocqueville model" and what I like to call the Doctrine of Eternal War. 

Think Progress jumped right on this with some good discussion starters for the young scholars BushCo hopes to get opinin':

“I foresee that all the military rulers who may rise up in great democratic nations will find it easier to conquer with their armies than to make their armies live at peace after conquest. There are two things that a democratic people will always find very difficult, to begin a war and to end it.” [Link]

“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” [Link]

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” [Link]

“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.” [Link]

“When an opinion has taken root among a democratic people and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the community, it afterwards persists by itself and is maintained without effort, because no one attacks it.” [Link] (Note: DeTocqueville never imagined the creation of blogs)

Mais ouch! 

What's most interesting to me is that Dear Leader is so open about the uninspiring do-nothing mandate for the BushCo Freedom and Liberty Legacy or Think Tank Foundation, which is rooted in sitting around talking about Freedon and Liberty.  That is, doing essentially nothing except figuring out how to catapult the old libertudinous propaganda. 

Contrast that with what Presidents Carter and Clinton chose to do with their legacies.  Here's Ms. Bumiller's look at past presidential legacies or think tanks:

There are now a dozen presidential libraries, from Franklin D. Roosevelt's in Hyde Park, N.Y., to Bill Clinton's in Little Rock, Ark., and they operate as shrines, repositories of presidential papers and resources for scholars. None have [sic] a policy center of the kind and size that Mr. Bush evidently envisions, although Jimmy Carter's is adjacent to the well-known Carter Center, dedicated to advancing human rights and fighting disease.

Well, that's news to President Clinton, whom Ms. Bumiller ignores completely after making the comment that his library cost the most to build.   I called the Clinton Foundation today (Try finding the phone number to that place - it's not as easy as you think.) The lady I spoke to said that the Foundation most certainly is connected with the library.   And what does the Clinton Foundation want to do?  From their site:

The mission of the William J. Clinton Foundation is to strengthen the         capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet         the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, the         Clinton Foundation has developed programs and partnerships in the following         areas:

                        

Health Security
              Economic Empowerment
              Leadership Development and Citizen Service
              Racial, Ethnic and Religious Reconciliation

Nothing policy-related there.   And what has the Clinton Foundation done?

In Africa:

In the spring of 2005, President Clinton announced a bold initiative to   bring life-saving antiretroviral treatment to many of the millions of children   worldwide infected with HIV. Through the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative   (CHAI), President Clinton is drawing international attention and resources to the children   being left behind as HIV treatment scales up worldwide.

..

The   Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) is working to expand access   to pediatric treatment by supporting governments as they scale up their national   treatment programs to include increasing numbers of pediatric patients. The Clinton Foundation   also works to reduce the cost of pediatric ARV formulations and support the   training of pediatric care providers and the development of pediatric protocols.

In the United States:

The William J. Clinton Foundation’s Urban Enterprise Initiative (UEI)   supports the expansion of opportunity and economic growth in urban communities   by helping small businesses and entrepreneurs compete in the changing urban   marketplace. Working with partners, the Urban Enterprise Initiative provides   small business owners and entrepreneurs with the technical assistance and strategic   advice they need to grow their businesses and turn their vision into reality.

In our schools:

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation – a joint initiative of       the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association –       has worked with representatives of Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo,       and the American Beverage Association to establish new guidelines to limit       portion sizes and reduce the number of calories available to children during       the school day. Under these guidelines, only lower calorie and nutritious       beverages will be sold to schools. This is the Alliance’s first industry       agreement as part of its Healthy Schools Program, and it affects close to       35 million students across the country.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of time for sitting around and talking about de Tocqueville.  So here's to BushCo!  May he fill that void at the center of the nation's political soul and create the missing neocon policy center that will finally figure out the French perspective on freedom and liberty, long neglected by young scholars all over world.  After he finds a place to stick it, that is.

Ms. Bumiller also lets us in on the trouble BushCo is having deciding where to locate his modern marvel of political thought.  She's got inside information that during a dinner with Stanford's George Schultz, the Decider was grilling the former SecSt about what it's like to have the Hoover Institute on campus.  He needs to decide which elite university will get to host his joint:

At this point, Southern Methodist University in Dallas is considered the favorite to get Mr. Bush's presidential library and policy center, but the University of Dallas and Baylor University in Waco, Tex., near the president's ranch, are also in the running. All three universities have submitted formal proposals to the Bush library selection committee, led by Donald L. Evans, the former commerce secretary and Mr. Bush's longtime friend.

Go Mustangs!

It's White House Letter Day! Dear Leader Roolz!

Kewl Kidz yearbook editor, frequent guest on Hardball and former style reporter, Elisabeth Bumiller has put the official cap on Saturday night's WHPCA dinner with a glowing, fawning tribute to Dear Leader's comedy chops:

White House officials and Mr. Bridges said the double stand-up was the idea of the president, who last year ceded his spot on the program to his wife and in previous years relied on slide shows as visual props for his routines. As the 2,500-plus guests at the annual event know, by tradition the president is supposed to make fun of himself in an effort to establish his regular-guy credentials and ingratiate himself with the press.

This is the night the captain of the football team actually gets drunk with the hangers-on instead of showing up late and taking the head cheerleader straight upstairs to get laid.  It's a magic night as they jostle for his attention and it looks like from this column that Ms. Bumiller has toadied her way to the head of the class:

He had known about Mr. Bridges, who appears regularly as a Bush impersonator on "The Tonight Show," since 2002. At Christmas that year at the president's ranch, Barbara Bush, the president's mother, showed her son and the assembled clan a video of Mr. Bridges imitating Mr. Bush that had been used to introduce her at an appearance in Texas. Mr. Bush, amused, asked to meet Mr. Bridges, and eventually got together with him in Washington on Feb. 24, 2003, three weeks before the American-led invasion of Iraq.

"Maybe he needed a break or something," said Randy Nolen, Mr. Bridges's manager. "We had him laughing."

...

Mr. Bush told Mr. Bridges, Mr. Nolen said, that the time was not right for comedy, but that in the future they had to get together and do "something big." This year's correspondents' dinner was apparently big enough, and by mid-April Mr. Parvin had a script. 

He needed a break but he knew that the time wasn't right for comedy.  How presidential.  Dear Leader knew when the time was right to laugh again.  That's how he just knew that in March, 2004, at the Radio and Television Correspondants' Dinner, with the Iraqi insurgency starting to explode, 52 US soldiers dead that month and over 300 wounded, the time was right to joke about looking for WMD under White House sofa cushions.   

   Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.   (Laughter and applause.) 

...

Nope, no weapons over there. (Laughter and applause.) Maybe under here. (Laughter.) Oops, this photo wasn't supposed to be in here. This is the Skull and Bones secret signal. (Laughter.)

Laughter and applause from the assembled journalists.  That gag was fun-ny.   And don't kid yourself;  as Ms. Bumiller lets us know today, that kind of instinct for comedy and sensitivity isn't something you can learn.  You have to be born with it.  Thank god, Dear Leader was born with the gift.  And thank god he's willing to share it with the people who matter at their proms.

There was no mention of Stephen Colbert in the yearbook.  His comedy is just rude.  And he's so angry.  Doesn't he get that it's a party?

Related: You can't read about Colbert's performance in the corporate media, but you can watch it here, (and here), see BushCo's reaction to Colbert's video here, read a transcript of the speech here and leave a message for him at  Thank You, Stephen Colbert.   

It's White House Letter Day: Soldier Boy Edition

It's been a week since Dear Leader returned from his trip to Pakistan and India, where he blew up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the question on everyone's mind is how in the world was he able to spend the night safely in Dangerous Pakistan?   At least that's what Elisabeth Bumiller says and she should know:

President Bush has been back from the Asian subcontinent for more than a week now, but one big question from his trip remains: How did it happen that the president spent a night in Pakistan, the assumed haven of Osama bin Laden and one of the one most dangerous countries in the world?

Well, it happened because Perv insisted that BushCo sleep over.  And Perv insisted because he was still smarting from Clinton's refusal to spend the night six years ago.  (The powers of the Clenis are truly extraordinary.)   Now, with Pakistan harboring bin Laden a strong partner in the War on Terra, Dear Leader knew what he had to do.  From Ms. Bumiller, who must be dusting off her biography chops in preparation for the coming "Some Choose Greatness: The Fabulous Career of Condoleezza Rice":

White House officials will not say whether Mr. Bush overruled the Secret Service in making the trip, or even if he was told not to go. But it is no secret that the service was in a state of anxiety during his time in Islamabad.

Reporters were not told that Mr. Bush would be spending the night in Pakistan until 24 hours before, which was the same day that a suicide bombing in Karachi killed an American diplomat. In Islamabad, Air Force One arrived and departed in the dark, with its running lights off and shades drawn, so that it would be less of a target for a missile attack. Once the president was on the tarmac, it was impossible to tell whether he got into a waiting motorcade — or slipped into a Blackhawk helicopter for the trip to the fortresslike American embassy, with the motorcade speeding below as a decoy.

Either way, the route of the motorcade was the site of two of four assassination attempts on Mr. Musharraf, hardly a comfort to the Secret Service. In December 2003, a large bomb detonated on a bridge 30 seconds after Mr. Musharraf's motorcade passed. Eleven days later on the same route, two suicide bombers plowed their cars into the motorcade, killing 15 people and cracking Mr. Musharraf's windshield.

Oh. My. God.  He is so hot.  And brave.  Just like the soldiers who are killing and dying in that war he started.  And that wimpy Secret Service was all like, "We're nervous!" and BushCo was all like, "I'm going!  I must avenge that weakling Clinton's faux pas.  Tell my wife I love her."  And the Secret Service was all like "She's sitting in the helicopter next to you, sir."  And he was all like, "I know that!"  And they were all like, "Yes, sir.  Wheels up, sir."

We are indeed a lucky and grateful nation.

Hey, Adam! Look Over Here!

After I've spent years  watching Elisabeth Bumiller with the kind of devotion that can only be described as canine and with a balance that must be acknowledged by everyone to be rare among press watchers on the left and completely absent those on the right - after a year spent digesting the poison that dripped from Ruderon's (nee Wilgoren) reporting - after years of reading and watching the NYT political reporting in general, including some good stuff on Nagourney the Noble himself -- if he does a story on political blogs and he doesn't interview me on background ... well, that's just journalistic malpractice. 

CHUCK PENNACCHIO MUST BE ELECTED!

It's White House Letter Day! The Indian Edition

It looks like Elisabeth Bumiller is going to pull out all the stops in her final few months writing the White House Letter before she take that year off to write "Some Kind of Wonderful:  A Catalogue of the Splendiferous Accomplishments of Condi, America's  the World's Most Awesome Woman."    She's been covering the week's big story:  BushCo jumpstarting the Asian nuclear arms race by giving India a presidential, treaty-busting dispensation when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation.   

Let me take a minute here to say that I am almost completely confused about what happened in India and Pakistan.  It seems to me that BushCo has pulled another one of his Reality on the Ground tricks, wherein he decides that stuff like the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the War Powers Act and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are obsolete in the face of certain "realities on the ground."  The realities in this case being the nuclearization of India,  Iran, Pakistan and North Korea despite what any treaty claimed to be able to stop.

It's a typically short-sighted view, which relies on an insane overestimation of American omnipotence in the world leading one to believe that safeguards, even imperfect ones, against an all-out Asian arms race, make us somehow weak.  But BushCo is, after all, the kind of poker player and world leader who cold calls every raise without knowing, or even caring, what's in his hand.  David Sanger helps him out on that score with a BushCo-friendly look at the cards here.   

But knowing  all the facts is for suckers.  All Dear Leader needs to know is that God is his on his side, we'll all be dead when history judges us and that every country in the world secretly wants to be us, because we are, after all, Number One!. 

If you want the other side of the story, there have been a bunch of great blog posts you can read.  BtC News, Steve Soto and Neil Shakespeare all weigh in wondering why BushCo would choose to blow up the relative calm in the region by essentially kicking Pakistan in the nuclear teeth, with China waiting in the wings to offer some needed comfort.  That question is answered from an Indian persective in this gleeful column by C. Raja Mohan in the Indian Express. (and here) Finally, in a post with Kashmir and Armageddon in the title,  Sir Lacksalot follows the path BushCo just jumped on to a logical conclusion.   I'll take this moment to remind everyone of the infamous loose nukes floating around and suggest that the increasing peer pressure on terrorist organizations, which could be nineteen guys with a bunch of money and a dream, to go nuclear is not something we should ignore. 

Are you still with me?  Those people who would rather look at beautiful celebrities in pretty clothes than think about this kind of stuff aren't looking so stupid now are they?  Which brings me back to our Ms. Bumiller, who never met a distracting GOP talking point she didn't grab with both hands, has been "covering" this story in news stories, like this 1,100-word story about the Indian deal that doesn't mention China once, and in the WH Letter, which we all know is the NYTimes answer to People Magazine. 

Last week's Letter was all about how deeply in love with India Dear Leader is.  Some of his best political friends are Indian!   But, despite that infatuation, he would not be finding time to visit the world's most famous tomb, the Taj Mahal.   Here's the take away:

In interviews last week, Mr. Bush said that he would have to visit the Taj Mahal, a three-hour drive from New Delhi, another time. (President Bill Clinton, an avid sightseer, visited the Taj on a five-day trip to India in 2000.)

"The part of international travel he likes the best, and the part he's best at, is meeting with other leaders," said Mr. Green, who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He'll make a lot of time for that, and he'll spend a lot of time preparing for it. That for him is the high value for travel."

BushCo can't be bothered with waddling around tourist traps like Clinton did.  Dear Leader is all about the leadership.  Ms. Bumiller continued and amplifed that theme to staggering heights today in her wrap-up letter from the trip. 

The point of the column is that the trip to India gave BushCo a break from all the domestic ire coming his way in light of Katrina, Dubai, falling polls and a bunch of other bad acts that Ms. Bumiller helpfully doesn't mention.  But the subtext is one of the White House's top talking points: BushCo, unlike any president before him, is fearless as he gives away the keys to the nuclear store and our middle class:

Mr. Bush bookended his trip to India with a surprise four-hour stop in Afghanistan and a 24-hour stay in Pakistan, where Mr. bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the remote tribal areas near the Afghan border. But Mr. Bush, the first American president to visit Afghanistan since President Eisenhower in 1959, and the first to visit Pakistan since President Clinton in 2000, bounced around Mr. bin Laden's terrain with defiance.

Unlike Mr. Clinton, who slipped into Islamabad for six hours on an unmarked military jet, Mr. Bush arrived with a roar on Air Force One. (Although Air Force One, the most recognizable 747 in the world, landed with its running lights off and shades drawn, making it a more difficult target for any ground-launched missile.) Mr. Bush also stayed the night at the fortress-like American ambassador's residence and took time out the next day to take a few swings with a cricket bat with students from the Islamabad College for Boys.

"Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan," he had vowed in New Delhi.

My, my, I'd swoon if I weren't already sitting down.  And how about that sneaky Clinton?   He never did anything this bold.   He never dismantled the non-proliferation treaty.  He only went after welfare.  What a wimp.

We've seen love notes like this before and in similar situations.  When, for instance, the White House needed some cover from the Abu Ghraib disaster, Thom Shankar dashed off this breathless account of Ol' Man Rummy's suprise visit to Iraq after testifying about torture "interrogation techniques" at Abu Ghraib:

He touched down for the tour of the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, on Thursday, a blustery day in which the faded prison, the desert and the overcast sky threatened to blend. The rotors of the arriving helicopter roiled the rocks and sand, forming an opaque yellow haze.

Then Mr. Rumsfeld appeared, wearing a blue blazer, gray slacks and brown desert hiking boots, the unofficial uniform of senior American civilians in Iraq.

He stepped onto the prison grounds, from one whirlwind into another.

Pick your distractions, people.  I prefer mine to be of the Clooney variety: