Bush's Baghdad Mouthpiece

Snow Recants

The Associated Press reports: "President Bush's press secretary on Wednesday backed off a comment that appeared to suggest the administration was resigned to Iraqi lawmakers taking August off based on the summer heat in Baghdad.

"'I used a dumb line,' Tony Snow told reporters. . . .

"Snow had agreed in a briefing last Friday that Iraqi lawmakers had much work to do before a U.S. progress report is made in September, but said: 'You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August.'

"The remark has drawn criticism since U.S. troops, many of them in heavy battle gear, don't have the luxury of taking a month-long vacation to escape the Baghdad heat."

The Campaign for the War

David Espo writes for the Associated Press: "Senate Republicans torpedoed legislation Wednesday to force the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, bowing to President Bush's adamant refusal to consider any change in war strategy before September."

Anne Flaherty writes for the Associated Press: "The White House is pushing hard to buy time for its Iraq strategy, offering Congress unusual access to President Bush's top military and diplomatic advisers.

"About 200 lawmakers were invited to the Pentagon for a classified question-and-answer session on Thursday with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador there. The two men were expected to brief lawmakers via satellite from Baghdad.

"Bush's new war adviser, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, also was to be in the room. . . .

"The officials were expected to make the case that some progress has been made in Iraq since Bush ordered the deployment of some 30,000 extra troops earlier this year. The officials also were expected to argue it is too early to tell whether the strategy is working, and that members of Congress should hold off on demanding change until at least September."

Mike Allen writes for the Politico that since White House counselor Ed Gillespie joined the administration in June, "the president has practiced more personal diplomacy with allies on the Hill and in the press in an effort to stanch the flow of pessimism about the remaining 17 months of his presidency and to improve the sorry state of relations between the administration and its supposed allies in Congress."

For instance: "Bush held a long, casual session with nine influential conservative columnists last Friday. The meeting -- peppered with mutual compliments -- has produced a torrent of laudatory coverage from formerly friendly commentators who had turned skeptical and even hostile on some issues.

"People familiar with that session -- also held in the Roosevelt Room -- say it was jocular, with Bush going off the record at several points to give unvarnished views on foreign affairs. He called on William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Time magazine as 'Billy' and opened the floor to Lawrence Kudlow of CNBC and the National Review by asking, 'Kuds, how about the market today?'"

Here are the resulting mash notes from William Kristol, David Brooks, Fred Barnes, Kate O'Beirne and Rich Lowry, and Michael Barone.

Opinion Watch

The USA Today editorial board writes that Tuesday's intelligence report "should serve as a reminder that the overriding goals of the war on terror are still the same as they were when the nation was allied behind them after 9/11: apprehend or kill bin Laden and top al-Qaeda leaders; destroy the organization; counter the appeal of extreme Muslim ideology; and prevent new attacks.

"The misbegotten Iraq war has diverted attention from those objectives. It has boosted al-Qaeda's standing and recruitment. Though no meaningful link existed before between Iraq and al-Qaeda -- and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 -- one has now been created. Worse yet, the Iraq war has split the nation and shattered the post-9/11 sense of shared purpose. . . .

"The prudent response is to treat the findings as a sobering springboard back to the clarity of purpose just after 9/11, when the nation understood where the threat came from and united behind Bush's vow to track bin Laden and his followers to the ends of the earth."

Tony Snow writes in USA Today with an opposing view: "Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. . . . We never argued that [Saddam Hussein] played a role 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president's integrity. . .

"Al-Qaeda doesn't have the strength it had six years ago, but it remains committed to killing Americans. It also wants to find a safe haven, as it had in Afghanistan. It sees Iraq as its best hope. It wants to topple Iraq's emerging democracy and establish a base of operations in a land with vast oil reserves.

"More than anything, al-Qaeda wants the United States to leave Iraq and hand victory to the terrorists. But it will not succeed. Recent military action has inflicted serious damage on al-Qaeda in Iraq and has inspired a growing number of Iraqis to fight al-Qaeda. That vindicates the president's faith in liberty as a common inheritance of mankind. . . .

"Victory in Iraq will mark the beginning of the end of the war on terror."

Peter W. Galbraith writes in the New York Review of Books: "The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

"The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, 'The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America.'

"Tellingly, the Iraq war's intellectual boosters, while insisting the surge is working, are moving to assign blame for defeat. And they have already picked their target: the American people."

Galbraith concludes: "Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today -- a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region."

Michael Duffy writes for Time: "How do we leave in a way that maximizes the good that we can still achieve and minimizes the damage that will inevitably occur? The best strategic minds in both parties have argued for months that the answer is essentially to muddle our way out, cut our losses carefully and try to salvage what we can from a mission gone bad. Even under the rosiest scenarios, the U.S. will suffer a humbling blow to its prestige as it leaves Iraq and the Sunni-Shi'ite civil war intensifies. But with the debacle would come some dividends. Done judiciously, a pullback from the war would start restoring America's ability to advance its interests and deter aggression beyond Iraq. . . .

"[A] responsible retreat would limit U.S. casualties and move America out of a debilitating chapter that has now played out politically at home, if not militarily on the ground. In a world of bad options, a phased withdrawal is the least bad one out there."

Timothy Garton Ash writes in a Los Angeles Times opinion column: "At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged 'Al Qaeda Central' in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed, and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an Al Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old Al Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan and there are Al Qaeda emulators spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe.

"Osama bin Laden's plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. . . .

"In history, the most important consequences are often the unintended ones. We do not yet know the longer-term unintended consequences of Iraq. Maybe there is a silver lining hidden somewhere in this cloud. But as far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic.

"Looking back over a quarter of a century of chronicling current affairs, I cannot recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster."

Bush on Health

Christopher Lee writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance.

"The president said he objects on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has proposed $5 billion in increased funding and has threatened to veto the Senate compromise and a more costly expansion being contemplated in the House. . . .

"About 3.3 million additional children would be covered under the proposal developed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), among others. It would provide the program $60 billion over five years, compared with $30 billion under Bush's proposal. And it would rely on a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes, to $1 a pack, which Bush opposes.

"Grassley and Hatch, in a joint statement this week, implored the president to rescind his veto threat. They warned that Democrats might seek an expansion of $50 billion or more if there is no compromise."

Here's the audio of Lee's interview with Bush.

Lee notes: "In the 15-minute interview, Bush also rejected the charges by former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona that the administration's political appointees routinely rewrote his speeches, blocked public health reports for political reasons and screened his travel."

Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush on Wednesday reiterated his threat to veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children's health insurance by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes. . . .

"Bush spoke after attending a round-table discussion at Man & Machine Inc. [in Landover, Md.] with small business leaders the president said feel pinched by high health care costs. . . .

"Man & Machine, which employs 20 people in Landover, makes water-resistant computer accessories designed for hospitals, medical laboratories and industry. During the tour, Bush typed on a white keyboard immersed in a pan of water. He wrote: 'G Tro N was the first president.' Clifton Broumand, company president, joked that Bush, who apparently was trying to write 'George Washington was the first president,' might want to practice his typing."

Leahy Wants Answers

Jesse J. Holland writes for the Associated Press: "A leading Senate Democrat asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Wednesday to clear up apparent conflicts in testimony from Gonzales and former top Justice Department officials about the firing of federal prosecutors and other matters.

"Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent written questions to Gonzales so he can prepare for his next appearance before the committee, scheduled for July 24. . . .

"Leahy also plans to probe the differing stories lawmakers have heard about the government's warrantless wiretapping program. The Vermont senator said Gonzales told them in February 2006 that no senior Justice Department officials had any concerns about the electronic surveillance program.

"However, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified that the Justice Department was against the re-certification of the program in 2004."

Oversight Watch

David Goldstein writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "Summoning the ghost of Harry Truman, the Senate's freshman Democrats on Wednesday called for the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate wartime profiteering in Iraq.

"Truman was a freshman senator from Missouri in 1941 when he led an inquiry into waste and abuse in government contracting during World War II.

"Under the 2007 version of his effort, spearheaded by Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia, the proposed commission would investigate the mismanagement of private contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in $9 billion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for."

Here's more on the Truman Committee from NiemanWatchdog.org, where I am deputy editor.

White House Spy Watch

Edith Honan writes for Reuters: "A former White House official who took top secret documents from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's office and gave them to opposition figures in the Philippines was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.

"Philippine-born Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, . . . worked on the security detail assigned to the vice president from 1999 to 2002, where he held a top security clearance. . . .

"Prosecutors told the court Aragoncillo used a fax machine in Cheney's office to send documents to the Philippines. They said up to 800 classified documents had been compromised by Aragoncillo, as well as the name of a U.S. government source."

Cheney's Evil Twin?

Nicholas D. Kristof writes in his New York Times opinion column (subscription required) about the possibility that "Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth." They "certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations," he writes.

"Both men are hawks who defy the international community, scorn the U.N. and are unpopular at home because of incompetence and recklessness -- and each finds justification in the extremism of the other. . . .

"[O]ne of the perils in the final 18 months of the Bush administration is that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad will escalate provocations, ending up with airstrikes by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites."

Froomkin Watch

No column tomorrow. See you again on Monday.

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on energy dependence; Rex Babin and Mike Luckovich on fighting in the wrong place; Steve Benson on Bush reaping what he sowed.