Where's Osama?

"BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked -- the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was -- could have done a better job of comforting people. A lot went right, by the way. But the chaotic scenes were very troubling. It just -- it was very unsettling for me to realize our fellow citizens were in near-panic wondering where the help was."

Okay, skipping over the euphemism about "a better job of comforting people" -- when exactly was that moment?

In "How Bush Blew It," his Newsweek story last September, Evan Thomas wrote: "The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One."

So that would be Friday morning, Sept. 2, that Bush saw people screaming for help.

Katrina made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29.

Former FEMA head Michael Brown told NBC's Brian Williams that he told Bush on Tuesday that 90 percent of the population of New Orleans had been displaced.

Bush finally cut short his Texas vacation on Wednesday, in time to give a listless speech at the White House.

Thursday morning, he memorably told ABC's Diane Sawyer: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

But the official White House line from homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend remains: "I reject outright any suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved."

The Touchy-Feely Stuff

Vargas did break ground on some personal issues. Bush talked at some length about his twin daughters.

"VARGAS: Now I have to ask you because both of them are young women who are very attractive -- any chances of a White House wedding for either of them do you think?

"BUSH: All I can tell you is this: If a suitor shows up and asks for their hand, he's going to get to come here to the Oval Office and give me an explanation."

On Cheney

Vargas asked if Bush was committed to keeping Dick Cheney on as vice president.

"BUSH: Absolutely.

"VARGAS: Until the end of your term?

"BUSH: Sure. He's a friend. He's got good opinions and good advice. Sometimes I accept his advice, sometimes I don't. But when I make up my mind, he's a strong supporter."

Off the Record

But wait, the really good stuff was off the record.

Vargas blogs on ABCNews.com: "It was after the interview ended -- when the cameras were off and our conversation was off the record -- that we saw his personality more sharply defined. His convictions and his desire to connect with others became more pronounced as he talked about concerns of his that we didn't cover during the interview. It was easy to see why he inspires admiration -- and criticism -- among the American public."

What He Knew When

Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay write for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.

"Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions -- not foreign terrorists -- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops."

At the time, however, "President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists."

Strobel and Landay quote Robert Hutchings, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005 as saying: "Frankly, senior officials simply weren't ready to pay attention to analysis that didn't conform to their own optimistic scenarios."

Poll Watch

There's still more fallout today from Bush's bottom-of-the-barrel CBS News poll numbers. (See yesterday's column .)

Here's Chris Matthews on NBC's Today Show: "The number that really surprised me -- 29 percent on personal approval. People don't like the president -- even more than they don't like his policies -- which is a staggering blow because we all know that he's had two things going for him since he's been president: The war on terror, where he's had good numbers, and now they're negative; and likeability. They're both going down."

And on the controversy surrounding the Bush administration's plan to turn over port operations to an Arab company:

Matt Lauer: "It has political hot potato written all over it. Of course the real question is, how did President Bush -- how did Karl Rove -- how did they get blindsided by this? How did they miss it?"

Matthews: "This blindsidedness has become endemic. When we saw the Katrina horror, it was because the president wasn't even watching television. This is a technical problem. His staff is not keeping him alert 24/7. With the Harriet Miers nomination he was off base with that. Now he is off base with the ports issue. . . .

"Why isn't Karl Rove telling the president, 'Mr. President, we've got a head's-up situation on this, we've got to get this on fast?' Nobody is waking up the president to these issues day to day. And it's becoming endemic. It's becoming a habitual problem of incompetence.

"And I'm telling you, the people that really liked the president a few months ago, and really trusted him a few months ago on terrorism, must be wondering why his second term is so second rate?"

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post that "at the White House, aides were decidedly downbeat, making dark jokes about the latest political trajectory and the Murphy's Law quality of life in the West Wing these days -- what can go wrong will go wrong. At least, some consoled themselves, Bush beat out Vice President Cheney, who was viewed favorably by just 18 percent in the CBS survey.

"Others held on to the hope that this, too, shall pass.

" 'We've got a period of time when the news that's dominating the headlines is not good and some Republicans are going to feel free to distance themselves from the president,' said a senior White House official who was not authorized to speak on the record. 'But at the end of the day, I don't think the breach is deep or lasting because this is the president's strong suit. I think it's about this moment in time. I don't think it's fundamental.' "

When Vargas asked Bush if he still had political capital, Bush answered: "I've got ample capital and I'm using it to spread freedom and to protect the American people, plus we've got a strong agenda to keep this economy growing."

Libby Watch

Jim Popkin reports for NBC: "Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team confirms the news.

"Schacter, who has been at Harvard since 1991 and who has a 29-page resume, is the author of 'The Seven Sins of Memory' and 'Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past.' "

In response, the Senate Democratic Communications Center sent out an e-mail yesterday with the subject-line: "Eternal Sunshine of Scooter Libby's Leaky Mind," saying that "the amnesia story-line seems a more appropriate plot point for a bad soap opera than a foundation for the Vice President's aide's defense strategy."

More Sammon

Bill Sammon writes in the Washington Examiner with more from his new book.

"President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says 'conspired' to harm him with forged documents.

" 'I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,' Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book 'Strategery.' 'It's interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.' . . .

"Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.

" 'It's the beginning of the 21st century; it also happens to be the beginning of -- or near the beginning of -- a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination,' he said."

Speaking of alternative media, National Journal's Daniel Glover writes: "Beltway Blogroll has learned through a Capitol Hill source of a recent meeting that Bush had with a Republican member of the House leadership to discuss blogs and their significance in Washington. That same lawmaker is now penning a follow-up letter to the president, the source said."

Impeachment Watch

Garrison Keillor writes in Salon: "The peaceful lagoon that is the White House is designed for the comfort of a vulnerable man. Perfectly understandable, but not what is needed now. The U.S. Constitution provides a simple ultimate way to hold him to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country's defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence."

Harper's has posted excerpts from the cover story by its editor Lewis H. Lapham : "The Case for Impeachment: Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush."

Lapham was quite taken with the report compiled by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff, and commissioned by Rep. John Conyers Jr. on Michigan.

Lapham writes: "Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal -- known to be armed and shown to be dangerous."

Edward Epstein and Charlie Goodyear write in the San Francisco Chronicle: "San Francisco's supervisors jumped into national politics Tuesday, passing a resolution asking the city's Democratic congressional delegation to seek the impeachment of President Bush for failing to perform his duties by leading the country into war in Iraq, eroding civil liberties and engaging in other activities the board sees as transgressions.

"The supervisors, in voting 7-3 for the resolution, made it likely that San Francisco again will become grist for radio and TV talk shows."