♠
Now we have to depend on — Oh, my God! — President Bush to persuade the world to read the whole N.I.E. and see it in a balanced perspective. As I’ve also said before: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them, but good luck getting anyone to buy that anymore.

-- Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times

Friedman does a nice job explaining why the popular NIE statement clearing Iran may be a good kick in the seat of Dubya's pants, but Iran is still a dangerous government and the nuclear threat is real, and is only made worse because of this misleading NIE news.

( Friedman )

xXx

♠
Caroline Glick gives the dire side of the fallout from the National Intelligence Estimate clearing Iran of hard nuclear intentions. I like to think she goes a bit far in arguing that we are abandoning Israel, but I'm afraid that the compromised state of the Bush Administration has left Israel more vulnerable to a very nasty future.

( column )

xXx

♠
"The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future" by Craig Unger

Okay, you can probably tell from the title alone that this book probably won't go down as the most coldly neutral analysis of Bush's policies, but I am still interested. It sounds like a widely encompassing account of these years and the main events. The Amazonians love it, though I suppose it is a pretty anti-Bush crowd, but aren't we all. Even conservatives are unhappy with the Administration. I think only the Christian fundamentalists are able to love this presidency, which explains a lot.

xXx

♠
The Times has an excellent article on the story of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear development and its reversal. I come away impressed by how easy it should be to fool these intelligence agencies with planted evidence, as they base so much on so little, a stolen lap top here, an intercepted note there. How can one be "highly confident" about anything?

( article and more )



xXx

♠
George Will writes about a new book titled "Curveball", which is also the code name of the Iraqi defector that played such a critical role in making the Bush Administration's case that Iraq was well-advanced in weapons of mass destruction. And what an absurd tale it is. Will brings out the point that this debacle only complicates the developing situation with Iran.

( George Will )

xXx

♠
War profiteering happens even in “good” wars. Arthur Miller made his name in 1947 with “All My Sons,” which ends with the suicide of a corrupt World War II contractor whose defective airplane parts cost 21 pilots their lives. But in the case of Iraq, this corruption has been at the center of the entire mission, from war-waging to nation-building. As the investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele observed in the October Vanity Fair, America has to date “spent twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars to rebuild Iraq as it did to rebuild Japan — an industrialized country three times Iraq’s size, two of whose cities had been incinerated by atomic bombs.” (And still Iraq lacks reliable electric power.)

-- Frank Rich for The New York Times

Mr. Rich gives us another piece on the war profiteering in Iraq, and how the Bush Administration has brought this to new heights, and how it can seem that this profiteering was at least as important as the mission of bringing democracy to Iraq. At least they were successful with the profiteering. Rich writes of the suicides and murders that have underwritten this corruption.

xXx

♠
Let's use this space to let Thomas Friedman stick it to Dubya
using Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize.

It will help to relieve some of the stress.

( Friedman )

xXx

♠
Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: “Well, how did we get here?” They may tell themselves: “This is not my beautiful Right.” They may ask themselves: “My God, what have we done?”

But their movement is the same as it ever was. And Mr. Bush is movement conservatism’s true, loyal heir.

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

Mr. Krugman responds to the recent attempts by conservatives to distance themselves from the ruinous debacle of the Bush Administration. He really lays out a devastating historical case against them. Alas, I'm afraid the real problem for conservatives are not these ugly streaks that Krugman waves in their faces, but the catastrophe of the Iraq war. If Bush could have risen above himself and made this a glorious victory, this movement conservatism would still be rolling strong. In so far as this movement is indeed faltering and failing, well, maybe there is a Providence in the fall of a sparrow.

( Krugman )

xXx

♠
I was going to put up a Gail Collins column on the Fred Thompson candidacy, since it has proven to be a slow news days for me, but after the president's speech tonight and the dour commentary on MSNBC, the Thompson candidacy seems like an irrelevant sideshow.

President Bush made official what we have known all along. He is carrying on the war full-tilt, leaving withdrawal to the next administration. It just feels tragic and sad.

Yet, it does give Iraqis a year to make it work, by coming together in a unified national government. But from today's vantage point, especially considering news this week that a big agreement on oil fell apart, who can believe that another decade will do them any good, much less another year.

xXx