Bush Tries Moving the Goalposts

"To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what 'supporting the troops' really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

"The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the 'high crime' of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest."

Blocking the Spin

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes: "As domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda. . . .

"Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.

"But these are stories you haven't been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda's role in Iraq -- and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

"And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn't even exist until after the American invasion.

"There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements."

So what's the right way to do it? Hoyt calls attention to a Jonathan S. Landay story for McClatchy Newspapers, the day after Bush's speech at the Naval War College: "Facing eroding support for his Iraq policy, even among Republicans, President Bush on Thursday called al Qaida 'the main enemy' in Iraq, an assertion rejected by his administration's senior intelligence analysts."

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald praises Hoyt's "extraordinary . . . watershed" column and concludes that "the defining practices of Judy Miller (blind, uncritical trust in the government's and military's sources) continue to shape and dominate much of the paper's coverage about Iraq and issues related to Iran."

Speaking of Spin

The IraqSlogger blog reports that Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the new spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, is fresh off a stint serving -- where else? -- at the White House.

Karl Rove Watch

And where could Bush possibly be getting his "It's all Al Qaeada" talking points?

Brent Gardner-Smith writes in the Aspen Daily News that Karl Rove spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival yesterday. "'Look, I make no apologies,' Rove said in response to a question from the audience about whether he felt personally responsible for the war."