Failing to Reassure

"Frances Townsend, the White House counter-terrorism adviser, dismissed suggestions that the administration was playing politics by releasing the information. 'Frankly, if political advantage was the name of the game, we would have gotten it out a lot sooner,' she said."

David Jackson writes for USA Today: "In previous speeches, Bush and other administration officials have played down the threat from bin Laden, saying he has been on the run and that his organization is damaged. On March 13, 2002, Bush told reporters that 'terror is bigger than one person,' and that bin Laden was 'a person who's now been marginalized.'"

At today's press conference, Bush was asked: "What would you say to those who would argue that what we've done in Iraq is simply enhanced al Qaeda and made the situation worse?"

Instead of answering, he chose to ask his own question: "Oh, so in other words, the option would have been just let Saddam Hussein stay there. . . . And the answer is absolutely not. . . . See, that's the kind of attitude -- you said, okay, let's them live under a tyrant, and I -- I just don't agree."

About Following Us Home

For more background, see my March 19 column, They Won't Follow Us Home.

That particular column was inspired by a Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus story that day in The Washington Post. They reported: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the United States' most formidable enemy in that country. But unlike Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts believe, the Iraqi branch poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland. . . .

"'Attacking the United States clearly remains on bin Laden's agenda. But the likelihood that such an attack would be launched from Iraq, many experts contend, has sharply diminished over the past year as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has undergone dramatic changes. Once believed to include thousands of 'foreign fighters,' it is now an overwhelmingly Iraqi organization whose aims are likely to remain focused on the struggle against the Shiite majority in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said."

So, if I have this straight: Several months after experts have determined Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not a threat to our own security, Bush releases two-year-old secrets about an alleged plot in an attempt to argue the contrary.

Bush's Invocation

I always find it discomfiting when Bush quotes the words of a homicidal maniac to make his point. But there he was again yesterday, uttering an invocation with a nearly Biblical construction: "Hear the words of Osama bin Laden."

It was in June of 2005 that Bush first used that construction. As I wrote at the time, having failed to capture or kill the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the president who had until then been notoriously averse to even mentioning his name out loud suddenly started quoting bin Laden in support of his central argument.

Said Bush at the time: "Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: 'This Third World War is raging' in Iraq.'"

Sectarian Violence Watch

Sudarsan Raghavan writes in The Washington Post: "More than three months into a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive designed to curtail sectarian violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, Health Ministry statistics show that such killings are rising again.

"From the beginning of May until Tuesday, 321 unidentified corpses, many dumped and showing signs of torture and execution, have been found across the Iraqi capital, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The data showed that the same number of bodies were found in all of January, the month before the launch of the Baghdad security plan. . . .

"Weeks after the security plan was launched in mid-February, Bush administration and U.S. military officials began citing a decline in sectarian violence as evidence of the plan's effectiveness. . . .

"But the recent increase in unidentified bodies raises questions about whether thousands of U.S. reinforcements can effectively halt sectarian violence.

"President Bush and other senior administration officials have cited declines in sectarian killings in justifying U.S. troop increases and additional funding for the war.

"'The level of sectarian violence is an important indicator of whether or not the strategy that we have implemented is working,' Bush said May 10. 'Since our operation began, the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially.'"

At today's press conference, Bush was asked about the report and replied: "It's a snapshot. It's a moment."

Congress Watch

The good news for the White House is that Congressional Democrats are still running scared of Bush and his noise machine.

Carl Hulse writes in the New York Times: "Congressional contortions over the Iraq spending bill could end up with most House Democrats momentarily occupying the position they were so desperate to vacate: the minority.

"The decision by the Democratic majority to strip the measure of a timetable for troop withdrawal has raised the prospect that it could be approved mainly by Republicans with scattered Democrat support. The idea that many Democrats would be left on the losing side in a consequential vote has exposed a sharp divide within the party, drawn scorn from antiwar groups, confused the public and frustrated the party rank and file.

"But in recounting the leadership's thinking, senior Democrats and other officials said that by early this week they had concluded there was no alternative but to give ground to President Bush despite their view that he had mishandled the war and needed to be put under tighter Congressional rein.

"Democrats said they did not relish the prospect of leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break -- the second recess since the financing fight began -- and leaving themselves vulnerable to White House attacks that they were again on vacation while the troops were wanting. That criticism seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left by bowing to Mr. Bush."

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write for Newsweek: "It may be temporary, and it may have little impact on the ground. But there's an I-told-you-so attitude in the West Wing--a rare feel-good moment in a second term beset by a succession of crises.

"The cause for the small up tick in mood? Watching the Democrats cave on legislation demanding a timetable for withdrawal in return for increased funding for the war in Iraq."

Monica Speaks

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane write in The Washington Post: "A former senior aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales leveled serious new accusations against him and his deputy yesterday, describing an 'uncomfortable' attempt by Gonzales to discuss the firings of U.S. attorneys as Congress and the Justice Department were intensifying their investigations of the issue.

"Monica M. Goodling, who resigned last month as Gonzales's senior counselor and White House liaison, also told the House Judiciary Committee yesterday that she 'crossed the line' by using political criteria in hiring a wide array of career professionals at Justice, including looking up political donations by some applicants.

"In a day-long hearing that afforded her immunity from prosecution, Goodling minimized her role in the controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year and joined a long line of Justice officials who say they were not responsible for adding names to the lists of those to be dismissed.

"But Goodling's appearance also opened broad new avenues of inquiry for congressional Democrats, who think Gonzales has presided over intensifying political meddling at the Justice Department. It also provided fresh evidence of the deepening rifts between current and former Justice officials, who have increasingly turned on one another since the prosecutor firings...

"Goodling's testimony about hiring practices amounts to a dramatic public admission that she and other Justice aides routinely used potentially illegal criteria in deciding whom to hire as career prosecutors, immigration judges and those in other nonpolitical government jobs."

Here's the transcript of her testimony.

Dana Milbank sums it up this way in his Washington Post column: "In a full day of testimony, she accused the No. 2 Justice official of giving false testimony to Congress, implied that Gonzales himself had improperly tried to influence her testimony, and generally described Gonzales's Justice Department as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican National Committee."

David Johnston and Eric Lipton write in the New York Times: "Democrats, clearly frustrated that her appearance did not provide a window into the White House and whether it had political motivations for the firings of the prosecutors, said they would push on in their effort to answer those questions. . . .

"'The only way we can get to the full truth is if Mr. Karl Rove is sitting in the very same seat that you're sitting in and he needs to be here, and he needs to be here posthaste,' said Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas."

The Unreported Story

The Bush administration policy of applying a political litmus test to civil-service hires in sensitive positions is one of the great open secrets in Washington. Yet it's been almost unreported.

One significant exception was this story by Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe in July. He wrote: "The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe."

That story, along with Savage's ground-breaking coverage of Bush's signing statements, won him the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Editorial Watch

The Washington Post: "When he testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee this month, former deputy attorney general James B. Comey said he was horrified by reports that the department was examining the political affiliations of lawyers being considered for career positions. 'If that was going on, that strikes at the core of what the Department of Justice is,' Mr. Comey said.

"Yesterday, promised that her testimony could not be used against her in a criminal prosecution, Monica M. Goodling, former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, admitted to doing exactly that as she screened applicants for prosecutorial positions. 'I know I took political considerations into account on some occasions . . . I know I crossed the line,' Ms. Goodling said. This was, for the reasons Mr. Comey suggested, a sad moment for anyone who cares about the Justice Department.

"It was sad, as well, that so many Republican committee members chose to ignore this ugly fact and heap praise on Ms. Goodling."

The New York Times: "It would have been naïve to think that Monica Goodling, a right-wing true believer and onetime Republican opposition researcher, was going to blow the whistle on the United States attorney scandal. But Ms. Goodling made some disturbing admissions yesterday, even as she strained to present every fact in the most favorable light to her Bush administration allies and claimed convenient memory lapses. Ms. Goodling admitted to politicizing the Justice Department in ways that certainly seem illegal; she made clear that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied at a critical point in the investigation; and she gave Congress all the reason it needs to compel Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, to testify about what they know."

Cheney's New Grandson

Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts write in The Washington Post: "Mary Cheney gave birth yesterday to perhaps the most anticipated baby in contemporary U.S. politics -- her first child, Samuel David Cheney, whom she will raise with her longtime partner, Heather Poe.

"The 8-pound 6-ounce boy is the sixth grandchild for Dick Cheney . The vice president and his wife, Lynne, both beaming, posed for a photo with him just hours after his 9:46 a.m. birth at Washington's Sibley Hospital.

"And that, it seems, will be that for now in terms of public comment from the family about the baby, who launched a lively debate when Cheney, 38, first discussed her pregnancy in December."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on Bush and deadlines; Stuart Carlson on Bush's new lapdog.