Bush's Middle Eastern Folly

"He should know history will not be kind unless he can come up with a plan that protects the troops and stabilizes the region,' Voinovich said he told Karl Rove, whom Bush dubbed 'the architect' of his 2004 re-election.

"Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President's current strategy.

"'I won't mention anyone's name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.'

"In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House's handling of Iraq by charging the administration 'f--ed up' the war."

Even More Troops?

Robert Burns writes for the Associated Press: "The U.S. military is weighing new directions for Iraq, including an even bigger troop buildup if President Bush thinks his 'surge' strategy needs a further boost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.

"Marine Gen. Peter Pace revealed that he and the chiefs of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force are developing their own assessment of the situation in Iraq, to be presented to Bush in September. That will be separate from the highly anticipated report to Congress that month by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for Iraq.

"The Joint Chiefs are considering a range of actions, including another troop buildup, Pace said without making any predictions. He called it prudent planning to enable the services to be ready for Bush's decision."

Like Vietnam, Only Different

Charlie Savage writes in the Boston Globe: "In the coming months, some 34 years after the Vietnam War shuddered to a halt, Congress will again attempt to do something unprecedented: stopping a war before a president is ready. Scholars agree that Congress has the power to force a shift in the conduct of the Iraq war, but the path will be difficult in the face of uncompromising opposition from President Bush. . . .

"There is ample historical precedent for Congress imposing limits on what presidents can do with US troops in the midst of a war, specialists say. But in all previous such cases, Congress was working with a president who was willing to sign its bills into law, usually as a negotiated compromise. . . .

"In those prior cases, presidents had years of governing ahead of them -- or at least believed that they did. But Bush's presidency will soon be over and Vice President Dick Cheney is not running to replace him. . . .

"'No one in that White House is destined for an accountability moment,' said Harvard law professor David Barron. 'Under normal circumstances a president would have incentives to bring [a war] to a close -- consistent with the wishes of the legislature, but somehow still on his own terms. But there doesn't seem to be any interest in doing that.'"

Savage also raises "the possibility that Congress could pass some kind of war restriction over Bush's veto -- only to see Bush defy the law anyway.

"Prompted in part by Cheney, the Bush administration has championed an aggressive view of executive power under which Congress cannot restrict the commander in chief's options, short of cutting off funds for the troops. This constitutional interpretation, which is disputed by many legal scholars, has surfaced repeatedly in recent months."

Kristol Redux

Arianna Huffington calls William Kristol's weekend opinion piece in The Washington Post "the single most deceptive piece of the entire war."

Kristol participated in a washingtonpost.com Q&A yesterday and defended himself, sort of:

"Greenbelt, Md.: You have been wrong about every important prediction you have made about the outcome of this war and this presidency -- why should anyone pay attention to you now?

"William Kristol: Feel free not to!"

Bush's Universe

David Brooks writes in his New York Times opinion column (subscription required): "I spent the first four days of last week interviewing senators about Iraq. The mood ranged from despondency to despair. Then on Friday I went to the Roosevelt Room in the White House to hear President Bush answer questions on the same subject. It was like entering a different universe."

Bush, Brooks writes, "seems empowered. His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency.

"All this will be taken as evidence by many that Bush is delusional. He's living in a cocoon. He doesn't see or can't face how badly the war is going and how awfully he has performed."

Brooks writes that Bush's "self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources. The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: 'It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist.'

"Second, Bush remains energized by the power of the presidency. Some presidents complain about the limits of the office. But Bush, despite all the setbacks, retains a capacious view of the job and its possibilities."

About That August Vacation

Fury continues to mount in Washington over the Iraqi parliament's plan to take the month of August off. Such a vacation would be a PR calamity for the Bush administration, one that Vice President Cheney tried to avert in May when he traveled to Iraq and urged members not to take a summer recess.

As I wrote in my May 10 column, several House Republican moderates turned on the president in a highly unusual White House meeting, warning Bush that his credibility was shot and that Republican defections were in the offing.

Here is video of Tim Russert describing the meeting to Brian Williams on NBC: "One congressman said, 'How can our daughters and sons spill their blood while the Iraqi parliament goes on vacation?' The president responded, 'The vice president is over there to tell them: "Do not go on vacation." ' "

Apparently, not everyone does what Cheney tells them to do.

At Friday's press briefing, Snow tried to make excuses for the parliament. "You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," he said. That led ABC News's Martha Raddatz to point out that "it's 130 degrees for the U.S. military also on the ground."

But White House Watch reader Dan Flowers e-mailed me with a meteorological "fact check": " Weather Underground says the highest temperature last August was 118 F, and mean high temp was 112F. Not cool by any means, but not 130 F."

Missile Watch

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush pushed forward yesterday with plans to deploy missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe in defiance of Russian objections, just days after Moscow announced that it will pull out of a major arms control treaty in what was widely seen as a retaliatory move.

"Bush met with Polish President Lech Kaczynski at the White House to confer about the missile defense project, which would station 10 interceptor missiles on Polish soil and build a sophisticated radar station in the Czech Republic. Kaczynski vowed to move ahead with the system despite Russian threats to target missiles at Poland, but he asked Bush for security help."

Children's Health Watch

As Robert Pear wrote recently in the New York Times, the White House has announced that Bush "would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.

"The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation's eight million uninsured children."

The Washington Post editorial board writes: "In the decade since its enactment, the State Children's Health Insurance Program has helped provide insurance coverage for millions of children whose families have modest incomes but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Now the Bush administration is picking an unnecessary, and unnecessarily ideological, argument over the program's reauthorization."

Scooter Libby Watch

Bob Egelko writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: "President Bush's rationale for sparing Lewis 'Scooter'' Libby from prison -- that his 2 1/2-year sentence was more severe than the former vice presidential aide deserved for lying to a grand jury -- is at odds with his support of new legislation that, by the administration's description, would make such sentences mandatory."

Backdrop Watch

Bush will be talking about health care tomorrow at Man and Machine Inc., a Landover, Md., company that manufactures liquid-proof keyboards. Then on Thursday it's off to Tennessee to talk about the budget at the Nashville Bun Company.

Cartoon Watch

Bob Gorrell on Bush's legacy; Ann Telnaes on Bush's real plan for the Middle East; Mike Luckovich on the Iraqi parliament.