Gwynne Dyer is awesome. The part I like the best is the way he’s perfectly willing to accept for the sake of argument that either the “small” or “large” version of the 9/11 conspiracy theory is correct — and then proceeds to logically consider the facts of the matter in order to come to his conclusions. Conspiracy theories are not true or false based on the inherent outlandishness of the claim. They’re true or false based on whether they’re true or false, and like Sherlock Holmes, you need to take a scientific approach if you want a chance to arrive at the truth.

Anyway: Film gives life to brain-rotting 9/11 conspiracy theories.

In normal times you wouldn’t waste breath arguing with people who fall for this kind of rubbish, but the makers of “Loose Change” claim that their film has already been seen by over 100 million people, and looking at my e-mail in-tray I believe them. It is a real problem because by linking their fantasies about 9/11 to the Bush administration’s deliberate deception of the American people in order to gain support for the invasion of Iraq they bring discredit on the truth and the nonsense alike.

You almost wonder if they are secretly working for the Bush administration.

I’ve noticed several commentators on the Libby verdicts making the same point I made back in July of 2005: Corn, Marshall on Rove/Plame. And I See an Elephant:

Rovebush (Bushrove?) operate in a realm where truth has no meaning, no power. They are the masters of that realm, the gods of that realm, and they have steadily amassed an army of fellow conspirators who will say whatever they tell them to say, as often as they need them to say it. I’m sure they believe they can convince pretty much anyone of anything.

But Fitzgerald doesn’t operate in that realm. He operates in the legal realm, which is all about truth. If this gets to court, the Rovebush side will spin, sure, but it won’t be the asymmetrical warfare they normally practice. There will be rules, and the other side will get equal time, and the truth, if sufficiently clear, will trump their spin.

It’s a little like a whiff of smelling salts, this Libby verdict. There’s a collective coming to our senses, a realization that whoa, that’s right; there’s such a thing as objective truth, and courtrooms are designed specifically as a crucible to burn away all the bullshit and spin and leave only truth behind.

So, there you go: The White House can shift instantly (and predictably) from “there’s a trial under way, and our country is founded on the presumption of innocence, so we’re not going to comment on the matter” to “there’s an ongoing legal procedure (the appeal) under way, so even though we’d really love to talk about it (and despite the fact that we’ve felt free to talk about any number of other ongoing legal matters when it suited our political purposes), our lawyers advise us that we really shouldn’t say anything at this time,” but the reality is, the vice president’s former chief of staff has been found guilty of multiple felonies for obstructing an investigation into a national security breach. And if you followed the trial at all closely, it’s fairly clear that Libby’s lies were specifically intended to obscure Dick Cheney’s role in foisting known-to-be-inaccurate information about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions on the public.

Which trumps lying about a presidential blowjob in the Oval Office by about a zillion percent.

Way to restore ethical conduct to the White House, guys.

Some excellent commentary from Josh Marshall about today’s hearings into the firing of US Attorneys by the Bush people at the Department of Justice:

Let’s be clear. The DOJ needn’t establish a lengthy or any paper trail to justify firing a US Attorney. Maybe they didn’t like the way she prosecuted gun crimes. Or maybe her bosses at Main Justice just didn’t like how she went about her job. Maybe they just plain didn’t like her. That’s fine. And while it would be irregular to fire a US Attorney in the middle of a president’s term for no evident wrongdoing, it would not in itself be improper. None of the USAs, as they’re called, are irreplaceable. And they do serve at the president’s pleasure.

The issue here is different. There is a clear and growing body of evidence that at least three of these firees were canned for not allowing politics to dictate their prosecution of political corruption cases. Or, to put it more bluntly, for not indicting enough Democrats or indicting too many Republicans. Which is to say they were fired for not perverting justice.

In the face of that evidence the administration has come up with a series of changing and often contradicatory alternative explanations, which range from the frivolous to the ridiculous.

The administration isn’t at war with the fired attorneys or Congress. They’re at war with the obvious.

From Scarecrow at Firedoglake, a nice catalogue of reasons why Dick Cheney is in no position to lecture the world on the subject of U.S. honor: Dick Cheney’s Honor.

David Corn has a good summary of the closing arguments that were given today in the Scooter Libby perjury trial: Final Arguments about Scooter, Cheney & Truth.

The case has been fairly interesting for me, mainly because of the way it tears aside a lot of the bullshit and presents a reasonably clear view of what was going on inside the Bush White House during the spring of 2003. There haven’t really been huge revelations; certainly not if you were paying attention at the time. But getting the facts out into the light is an important step. It will be nice if some similar light-of-day treatment can come from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq, but I guess I won’t hold my breath for that.

One thing in particular that has struck me is the self-righteous zeal Cheney’s office displayed in refuting Wilson’s “lie” (in quotes because I suspect it wasn’t an actual lie, but instead was merely a mistake on Wilson’s part) that the trip to Niger had been specifically instigated by Cheney’s office, and that Wilson’s negative findings must certainly have made their way back to Cheney’s desk. What an irony: The habitual liar (Cheney), for once actually having the truth on his side (that he hadn’t explicitly sent Wilson on the fact-finding mission), but prevented by national security considerations from going public with the information about Wilson’s wife. But of course, as we all now know, Cheney didn’t let concerns about national security stop him; he used intermediaries to leak her identity far and wide, until Novak bit and made the information public.

The raw, festering dishonesty that is at the heart of the Bush presidency comes from Cheney’s office. Bush himself is a liar, sure, and deserves to be held accountable for the crimes committed in his name. But Cheney is the Moriarty, the evil genius, the cynical spider at the heart of the web. Fitzgerald’s closing argument reiterated the government’s case that Libby committed perjury in order to protect himself, and while I guess that makes for a simpler storyline, I think the reality is darker than that. Libby lied to protect Cheney. He lied to obscure Cheney’s role in orchestrating the response to Wilson’s charges, and beyond that, to obscure Cheney’s role in making the original dishonest case for war.

They fight the light each step of the way, but eventually the light will win, at least for those willing to look. History will not be kind to these people.

Showing what a real newspaper reporter is capable of doing, Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy papers has an interesting update from Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the newly ascended chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: Rockefeller: Cheney applied ‘constant’ pressure to stall investigation on flawed Iraq intelligence.

According to Rockefeller, Dick Cheney regularly pressured former committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) to go slow on the investigation into pre-Iraq-war intelligence failures.

“It was just constant,” Rockefeller said of Cheney’s alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans “just had to go along with the administration,” he said.

It’s not a surprise. But it’s good to get it on the record.

Via Larry Downing of Reuters, via First Draft:

Earlier today I talked about Bush’s Iraq troop increase as a manifestation of his vanity. But in her column in today’s L.A. Times, Rosa Brooks points out the following interesting parallel with Vietnam (How Republicans win if we lose in Iraq):

By 1971, Nixon and Kissinger understood that “winning” in Vietnam was no longer in the cards — so they shifted from trying to win the war to trying to win the next election. As Nixon put it in March 1971: “We can’t have [the South Vietnamese] knocked over brutally … ” Kissinger finished the thought ” … before the election.” So Nixon and Kissinger pushed the South Vietnamese to “stand on their own,” promising we’d support them if necessary. But at the same time, Kissinger assured the North Vietnamese — through China — that the U.S. wouldn’t intervene to prevent a North Vietnamese victory — as long as that victory didn’t come with embarrassing speed.

As historian Jeffrey Kimball has documented, Kissinger’s talking points for his first meeting with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on the topic of Vietnam included a promise that the U.S. would withdraw all troops and “leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese.” The U.S. would “let objective realities” — North Vietnamese military superiority — “shape the political future.” In the margins of his briefing book, Kissinger scrawled a handwritten elaboration for Chou: “We want a decent interval. You have our assurance.”

It’s the same in Iraq, writes Brooks.

Bush’s “surge” is the “decent interval” redux. It’s too little, too late, and it relies on the Iraqis to do what we know full well they can’t do. There is no realistic likelihood that it will lead to an enduring solution in Iraq. But it may well provide the decent interval the GOP needs if it is to survive beyond the 2008 elections.

The surge makes Bush look, as Goldberg suggests, like he really wants to win, even as he refuses to take the necessary and honest steps to mitigate the terrible damage we’ve already done. The surge buys time — and meanwhile, the Democratic Party is placed in the same untenable position it was in during the last stages of the Vietnam War.

Sorry for the long absence.

Last night I listened to Bush explain how “we” believe sending more troops is the solution for Iraq. Funny how the Decider-in-Chief backs away from “I” and “me” as the consequences of his decisions become harder to deny.

I’m not going to go point-by-point through the idiocy. I don’t think it’s necessary. No one is fooled any more. But I did want to mention a few of the things I’ve been thinking about lately.

One is the quote that Jonathon Schwarz pointed out a few weeks ago:

Q What can you say tonight, sir, to the sons and the daughters of the Americans who served in Vietnam to assure them that you will not lead this country down a similar path in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: That’s a great question. Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament… it’s very clear what we intend to do. And our mission won’t change. Our mission is precisely what I just stated.

That was Bush back on March 6, 2003, a few days before the invasion.

The latest escalation is simply, as Josh Marshall has been pointing out, a way for Bush to “kick the can” down the road. He’s spending lives and dollars for his own vanity. It’s a way for him to avoid embarrassment, to continue pretending his emperor’s clothes look good after everyone realizes he’s naked.

The boy in the crowd who was brave enough to be the first to speak out is John Murtha. Every time that guy opens his mouth these days it’s shocking how much honesty comes out. He reminds me of Howard Beal in Network after his breakdown.

My new page-a-day Onion desk calendar (thanks, Mary!) had this item the other day:

It’s not really a funny subject, I realize, but sometimes you just have to laugh.

But the reality is pretty grim. We will be paying a collective price for this for many, many years. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Chris Whitley, especially his War Crime Blues, and as I listen to songs like Invisible Day, which he recorded under the Albert Bridge in Dresden, I listen to the sound of the swallows, and the water flowing past, and I wonder what he was feeling that day. It was the spring before his last healthy summer, his forty-fourth summer, and he sang with an earnestness that leaves me aching for all that we’ve lost these last few years.

Invisible Day (mp3 file)

Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here?
All my defenses dissolve in the air
Where do we go from here?

Some kind of light in the sky
Some kind of light in the sky
Some kind of guidance
To get us by

— Chris Whitley, 1960 – 2005

(Flickr photo by mamamusings)

I don’t think it’s the most important story of the day by a long stretch, but as the presidential falsehood journal of record I’d be remiss if I didn’t note this in passing. A week before the election, Bush answered questions for a small group of reporters in the Oval Office, in the course of which he was asked about whether he’d given thought to replacing Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Bush replied that Rumsfeld was doing a heck of a job (in effect), and that he would be keeping him in place for the next two years (see Terrence Hunt’s AP story: Bush says Rumsfeld, Cheney should stay).

Fast forward to the press conference shortly after the election, at which Bush announced that Rumsfeld was being replaced, and at which this exchange took place (video and transcript available from Think Progress: Bush admits he lied about Rumsfeld for political purposes):

REPORTER: Last week you told us Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now, and how much does it have to do with the election results?

BUSH: You and Hunt and Keil came into the Oval Office and asked me to question one week before the campaign. Basically, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? The reason why is I did not want to make a major decision in the final days of the campaign. The only way to answer that question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer. The truth of the matter is as well, that is one reason I gave the answer. The other reason why is I had not had a chance to visit with Bob Gates yet. I had not had my final conversation with Don Rumsfeld yet at that point. I had been talking with Don Rumsfeld over a period of time about fresh perspectives. He likes to call it fresh eyes.

It’s a little tortured to follow Bush’s explanation; watching the video, especially, I’m reminded of certain conversations I’ve had with my daughter in the wake of some action of hers I’m not happy with. But all told, what Bush is clearly saying is, “Yeah, I lied when you asked me that question, because we were in the final days of a campaign, and for political reasons I chose to be dishonest.”

There’s been a fair amount of discussion of this by both righty and lefty (and center-y) folks. Some of the more-interesting commentary I’ve seen is:

• Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: President’s evasion raises truth issues.
• Glenn Greenwald: Extremely odd behavior from the Washington Post re: the President’s Rumsfeld lie.
• Kevin Drum: Bush’s lie.

Kevin Drum, in particular, thinks this isn’t a big deal. He writes:

But, really, this has gotten way too much attention. There’s a pretty broad-based understanding, after all, that personnel issues are special: you’re expected to deny that anything is going on until the minute you make an official announcement. And there’s really no other way to do things. You can’t refuse to ever comment on your own subordinates, but at the same time you can’t give away future personnel moves by suddenly clamming up about them. The result is a kabuki dance accepted by everyone in which you’re allowed to lie about this stuff until something official happens.

However, this lying is typically a bit more smoothly done. What this kerfuffle really shows is that Bush must have been pretty rattled by the specter of upcoming defeat and then by the massive defeat itself.

I guess I’m mostly with Kevin Drum on this not being some terribly significant example of presidential lying. The most noteworthy part of it, for me, ends up being Bush’s casual “yeah, I lied. What about it?” response, and what that says about his evolving attitude toward his job, the press, and the public.

Some in righty blogistan have complained that if Bush knew he was getting rid of Rumsfeld before the election, he should have said so then, so he could have picked up some votes for being flexible on Iraq, thereby averting at least the loss of the Senate. What this misses, I think, is that Bush is better at doing those sorts of calculations than the average bear. What his response to the reporters hinted at, and what I think the righty complainers are missing, is that Bush’s Iraq policy is such a house of cards at this point that any acknowledgement of error (which is how a pre-election announcement of Rumsfeld’s ouster would have been seen) could have cost Bush many more votes than it gained.

At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how Bush saw it before the election. Now that the election is over, the lie is no longer useful, so out it goes. And if Bush couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to do even a minimal amount of sugar-coating on the about-face, it’s just another indication that for him, this whole Leader of the Free World thing has pretty much stopped being fun.

From the Washington Post: U.S. seeks silence on CIA prisons.

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.”

[snip]

Because Khan “was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention, and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level,” an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states…

Kevin Drum, in Torture and secrecy, writes:

This highlights the fundamental corruption of the human soul that torture causes. We know it’s wrong, so not only do we torture prisoners, but we then do what we must to conceal what we’ve done. And then we try to conceal even that. Torture and secrecy, secrecy and torture, world without end.

That’s not America. At least, it shouldn’t be.

Nope. America, the real America, the America I was born and raised in, is the home of patriots willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It’s a nation that faced the Civil War, and the Great Depression. It’s a nation that waded ashore on Omaha Beach, and raised the flag on Iwo Jima. It’s a nation that landed on the Moon.

George Bush wants to turn my America into a very different sort of country, into a pissant little dictatorship, fearful of the outside world, fearful of its own people, fearful of the truth. George Bush’s America would never have dared to sign the Declaration of Independence, or travel with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, or free the slaves, or defeat Hitler, or ride a rocket to another world. George Bush’s America would have peed on itself in the face of any of those terrors.

I’d hate to live in a country like that.

As a reminder that there exist intellectually honest, rational Republicans in the world, I link unto Daniel Drezner: Is it just me or did the earth move for everyone?

From a policy perspective, it’s good to see that the president is starting to think about other alternatives to simply staying the course. From a political perspective, however, my hunch is that this shift in rhetoric will be a disaster.

Why? For the past five years, Democrats have been vulnerable on national security issues. Bush and the Republicans projected a clear image of taking the war to the enemy, and never yielding in their drive to defeat radical Islamists. The Democrats, in contrast, projected either an antiwar position or a “yes, but” position. The former looked out of step with the American people, the latter looked like Republican lite. No matter how you sliced it, the Republicans held the upper hand.

The recent rhetorical shift on Iraq, however, has flipped this phenomenon on its head. If Bush acknowledges that “stay the course” is no longer a statisfying status quo, he’s acknowledging that the Republican position for the past few years has not worked out too well. If that’s the case, then Republicans are forced to offer alternatives with benchmarks or timetables or whatever. The administration has had these plans before, but politically, it looks like the GOP is gravitating towards the Democratic position rather than vice versa.

Yup, that’s pretty much how it looks for me. Or, for a less Republican-tinged version of reality, there’s this simile from Rosa Brooks’ The Google catches Bush:

When it comes to Iraq, being a citizen in George W. Bush’s America is like being a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver. Drunk on power, the administration has spent years driving resolutely into brick walls. To compensate, they’ve now adopted a policy of swerving all over the place.

It’s time to take away the car keys.

Billmon reflects on a recent post by Riverbend, and on his own complicity in the evil of the Iraq war: Down the River.

He pretty much sums up my own feelings.

As hosted by Norm at OneGoodMove, here’s Olberman’s take on the signing of the military commissions act: Your words are lies.

I read Craig’s criticisms of Olberman as just being another version of Bill O’Reilly, but I don’t buy it. I watched this video, and I can’t spot a single statement that isn’t, as far as I can tell, scrupulously factual. Yes, Olberman sounds outraged. But the things he’s responding to are objectively outrageous.

Here’s a thoughtful look at the Lancet study by William Arkin: 600,000 Iraqis Killed By War, Credible?

Arkin’s conclusion is that no, the Lancet numbers are not credible. Rather than the 600,000 Iraqi civilian deaths the study estimates, the real number is probably closer to 200,000.

That’s all: 200,000 additional deaths due to someone’s willingness to treat innocent third parties as his enemies in a global ideological struggle.

So, let’s see: Osama bin Laden did that in the U.S., treating Manhattan bankers and secretaries as legitimate targets, and killed about 3,000 people out of a total US population of 300,000,000. That’s about 0.001% of the population. Bush did that in Iraq, treating its innocent civilians as acceptable collateral damage in his effort to make war on “terror”, and (so far) has killed 200,000 (or so) people out of a total Iraq population of about 30,000,000. That’s about 0.67% of the population.

So, from the perspective of the targeted group, the damage inflicted by George Bush on the innocent civilians of Iraq has been roughly 670 times worse than the damage inflicted by Osama bin Laden on the US. (Or, if you want to look at absolute numbers, you could say that Bush has killed roughly 67 times as many innocent civilians in Iraq as bin Laden did on 9/11.)

Math is fun. Unless you happen to be dead as a result of your enemy’s ideologically driven willingness to kill the innocent. Which it turns out is about 670 times more likely if your enemy is George Bush than if your enemy is Osama bin Laden.

Cover from The Independent courtesy of Bag News Notes, which has some additional interesting discussion of these matters in The Toll.

Update: For those interested in digging a little deeper, some of the better commentary on the Lancet study is available from the following sources:

• Juan Cole: 655,000 Dead in Iraq since Bush Invasion.
• Good Math, Bad Math: The Iraqi Death Tally Study and Followup on the Lancet Study.
• Medpundit: Lancet strikes again.

There’s also a lot of whining about the study from war/Bush supporters whose comments are long on heat and short on reason, which was to be expected, I realize. But I don’t think that stuff is particularly worth linking to.

Finally, should you be so inclined, there’s the actual study, available as a PDF.

Later update: Still yet more followup worth reading, this time by Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information, as linked to by Kevin Drum: Legitimate questions on the Lancet survey and Illegitimate arguments about the Lancet study.

Watching Bush’s press conference this morning, I’m forced to give Craig a chuckle by pointing out that (to me at least) it’s obvious that Bush is receiving secret audio promptings. I’ve spent 6 years listening to the guy talk, and his public statements fall into two distinct categories: there’s him speaking his own words, and there’s him speaking while listening to someone whispering promptings to him. And today’s press conference was very much the latter.

It’s a subtle distinction I’m drawing, and it’s based on clues that are potentially ambiguous. When Bush pauses in the middle of a statement to “gather his thoughts,” then delivers something substantially more articulate than he’s able to come up with in other contexts, it’s clear (to me) what’s going on. When he tells someone to be quiet, to let him finish, when the person he’s outwardly addressing isn’t actually saying anything, it’s clear (to me) what’s going on.

Craig, when you’re done chuckling, I encourage you to go to whitehouse.gov and watch the video of today’s press conference.

Watch for the pauses. Watch his eyes. Ask yourself: What seems more likely, given what we’ve all learned about Bush in the last six years?

I know it’s an illusion of the TV era that we feel we “know” a celebrity in the same way we “know” someone whom we know in real life. But the more video of Bush I watch, the more convinced I am that I can tell when he’s actually speaking extemporaneously, and when he’s sometimes slipping into ventriloquist’s dummy mode.

It doesn’t really matter. I realize that all politicians are essentially dishonest, are trying to craft a false impression of their abilities. But in Bush’s case, I believe there has been a sustained, intense, and fundamentally dishonest effort to portray him as the kind of person who can get up in front of a group of reporters and effectively spin his policies for an hour at a time, based only on his own knowledge and abilities.

Update: And at the end of the White House webcast, as he walked away, I’d swear he had a Y-shaped pattern of lines running down the back of his jacket, similar to the ones that made such a stir during the Kerry debates. I’d be interested in seeing if those last few seconds of video are included in the version posted later on the White House site, and in taking a closer look at them if they are.

Later update: And now, having watched the archived video through to the end, it does in fact cut off as soon as he turns away, so I didn’t get a second look at the next second or two of video, which was part of the original White House stream. Oh well.

Fareed Zakaria has a sobering article in the latest Newsweek: Iraq’s dark day of reckoning.

It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America’s mission in Iraq has substantially failed.

For a while now, Bush’s argument has basically been that the situation is so screwed up that the only people you can trust to fix it are the people who screwed it up in the first place (because the Republicans are the only ones you can trust to prosecute the War on Terra in the direct, manly fashion that it requires).

That argument worked for a while, at least with a certain subset of the electorate (in particular, the geopolitically ignorant part of it that found the smoke and mirrors linking Iraq and al Qaeda to be credible).

But I think even the ignorant people are beginning to see the real situation: Bus. Ditch. Driver.

Bring on the midterms.

This makes me feel better. I’m not sure if, as a practical matter, it’s completely correct, but I like the sentiment behind it. From Dana Blankenhorn: No immunity for war crimes.

War crimes are like the murders of Lady Macbeth. They don’t wash out. Ever. There is no immunity for war crimes.

What happened in Abu Ghraib was a war crime. What the United States is doing in Iraq right now, probably a war crime. What Bush did with his secret detention centers in Europe and elsewhere, a war crime.

You cannot prosecute a war crime in the country where the leader ruled. If the leader’s people are still there, some chief judge will claim him innocent. Exclude them, limit the trial to the man’s enemies, and you have a show trial, not a real trial. The only way to prosecute a war crime is before a designated international tribunal, like the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

No matter what George W. Bush and his party try to do, that doesn’t change. If he is guilty of war crimes he will go to The Hague. The only hope is to steal this election, steal the next election, and steal every election until all the Bushes are dead of old age.

I missed this article when it appeared in the WaPo last week. It’s an interesting account of Bush’s meetings with families of servicemembers killed in action: For Bush, war anguish expressed privately.

Halley said the meeting did not change either of their minds. She would still vote against him. But she said she appreciated that he opened himself up to her. “I don’t think he’s a heartless man,” she said. “I think he’s pulled in a lot of different directions by very intelligent people. . . . I don’t think it’s going to change his policies, but I hope it does make him think about it. I hope I’m in his dreams.”

Keith Olberman gave a convincing impression of Edward R. Murrow the other day while calling out Bush. As hosted by Norm at OneGoodMove: No free passes.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.