White House Torture Advisers

"The president has frequently talked in public and private about his desire to leave a stable Iraq for his successor, an objective that seemed implausible amid spiraling sectarian violence in 2006. Aides said this impulse animated his decision to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year and that it colors every aspect of his Iraq policy, from negotiations on the security agreement to efforts to forge political compromises in Iraq.

"But as Petraeus and Crocker suggested in testimony this week, prospects for reaching the president's goal remain ambiguous, given the ongoing violence and the political strife. . . .

"Some Democrats are skeptical of Bush's motives, saying that the president and other Republicans are trying to shift blame when the next president begins a more rapid troop drawdown -- one that will be necessary, they say, to salvage the health of the U.S. armed forces.

"'We all know it's going to happen,' said Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to an eventual troop drawdown. 'He is going to do what Lyndon Johnson did: make sure the war was not lost on his watch.'"

Petraeus and Crocker, Continued

Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers write in the New York Times: "In a second day of Congressional testimony, the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, left Democrats and some Republicans again frustrated as he steadfastly declined to spell out what more would have to happen on the ground before he would endorse withdrawals to take the number of American troops far below the 140,000 set to remain there after July.

"In almost 20 hours of testimony over two days, General Petraeus and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, were much less specific than they were last September in assessing progress, prompting complaints that they presented no clear way for Congress or the American public to judge when or whether more troops might be on their way home."

Opinion Watch

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board writes: "The most striking impression of the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was what it lacked: A sense of direction."

Bush's Interview

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol got 40 minutes with Bush in the Oval Office yesterday, and usefully tells his readers that all the best parts were off the record.

"On the record," Kristol writes, "there were, as you'd expect, no great surprises."

Kristol writes that (on the record) Bush said that "at the heart of his speech today 'are a couple of questions . . . two big questions that will be answered. . . . One is, are we good enough to take the 20 [brigades in Iraq] out to 15? The answer is yes. Will [we] . . . take out any more beyond that? And my answer is no. I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say that I agree with David, that we ought to take a look. . . . And do I hope that we can continue 'return on success'? Yes, I do hope so. Do I guarantee it? No, I don't."

As for what they talked about off the record, well, Bush apparently "recounted some of the behind-the-scenes negotiations at the recent NATO summit. He discussed his phone conversation yesterday with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a previous conversation with Chinese president Hu Jintao about the Olympics, and earlier conversations with Arab leaders about Iran."

And he discussed Tuesday's Medal of Honor ceremony for Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, the Navy SEAL who threw himself on a grenade to save his comrades in Ramadi in September 2006.

Kristol writes: "I'll violate the off-the-record rules in order to convey the tenor of the president's lengthy response. He explained how difficult it had been for him to keep his composure. This was especially the case, he said, when he was congratulating and comforting Petty Officer Mansoor's parents (this was evident on television). What wasn't evident on the telecast was that when the president was reading his remarks and looked up at the audience, he saw the Navy SEALs assembled in the East Room, to a man, weeping. That's when, the president said, he really had to steel himself to retain his composure. . . .

"And he had a certain amount of steel in his voice when he then reiterated his determination not to allow the sacrifices of our fighting men and women to have been made in vain."

An Alternate View

Phillip Carter, whose Intel Dump blog has moved to washingtonpost.com, writes: "Within the military, we decorate our heroes (and Monsoor certainly is one) to reward their bravery and establish their example as one we might aspire to. Monsoor's actions deserve our admiration and awe.

"I am deeply disturbed, however, by the White House's unfortunate decision to hold this ceremony on April 8, 2008 -- the same day as the Petraeus and Crocker testimony before Congress. The timing of this ceremony could not have been accidental. It was clearly a political maneuver; an attempt to leverage the personal valor of Petty Officer Monsoor for political gain. That is wrong. Petty Officer Monsoor's sacrifice and valor are worthy of their own day -- not one designed for maximum political advantage."

On 'Proofiness' and 'Prepostrophes'

In my Live Online yesterday, I asked readers to help me describe an argument that is irrefutable -- and yet completely absurd. As I wrote: "The ultimate example, in my mind, was when Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's refusal to disclose his WMD meant that he had them. If you accepted the logic of that charge -- and it seems like almost everybody did -- then there was no way for Saddam to prove he didn't have WMD, even though that was in fact the case."

I wrote about seeing echoes of this sort of illogic in the arguments by Petraeus and Crocker yesterday: If things are going badly, we have to stay; but if things are going well, we have to stay.

Readers came through in a big way.

Several suggested "Catch-22 logic," which seems to capture it quite nicely.

Reader Kris Unger had several fun ideas: "Disthetical? Pseudo-coherent? Nontological?"

Another reader suggested: "Circulundrum, from circular and conundrum."

And a real winner: "How's 'proofiness' for your word?" I think Stephen Colbert should add that one to his lexicon.

Some readers provided other examples of the tactic in question. For instance; "History will vindicate him -- and no matter how long history does not vindicate him, he can always say, well, history isn't over yet." Or: "[W]hen there was a surplus and the economy was good, we needed a tax cut; when economy went bad, we needed a tax cut. They have solutions that are universal to any problem."

Another priceless comment from the chat: "When my son was in third grade, he was sharing what he'd been learning about punctuation. He invented a new one that our family frequently uses as a sort of quotation mark for dubious statements: the 'prepostrophe.'"

The Colombia Fight

Steven R. Weisman writes in the New York Times: "A drive by President Bush to win passage of a modest trade deal with Colombia erupted Wednesday into an angry partisan confrontation between the White House and House Democrats, with both sides using trade as a surrogate for an election-year battle over jobs, national security and the sinking economy.

"The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, took the White House by surprise when she announced plans Wednesday to block a vote on the Colombia accord. The move effectively holds the measure hostage until Mr. Bush agrees to more economic relief for Americans."

Paul Kane and Dan Eggen write in The Washington Post: "After Pelosi's announcement, the administration organized a series of fierce rebuttals to the Democrats' tactic."

Housing Watch

Maura Reynolds and Tiffany Hsu write in the Los Angeles Times: "With the Senate poised to take new action on the mortgage crisis and the House at work on far more sweeping proposals, the Bush White House is grudgingly giving ground on its ideological opposition to government intervention in the marketplace.

"After months of reluctance to pressure lenders to write down the principal on troubled mortgages, the administration announced Wednesday that it is now willing to do just that.

"Expanding an existing program, the Federal Housing Administration will allow borrowers who are behind on their payments and owe more on their homes than they are worth to refinance with a federally insured loan.

"Given the more aggressive proposals in Congress, however, further concessions probably lie ahead."

A Moment of Accommodation

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush yesterday reached across traditional political dividing lines to sign into law a broad program that provides federal grants for assistance to ex-convicts, pointing to his own struggle with alcohol addiction as an example of redemption."

The Common Theme?

Greg Hitt and John D. McKinnon write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "Congressional Democrats served notice they will seek to frustrate President Bush's agenda on a broad array of issues, including Iraq funding and free trade, as part of a strategy to wrest concessions from a weakened administration."

Late Night Humor

Jon Stewart reviews Tuesday's testimony by Petraeus and Crocker, with some video clips:

Stewart: "But let's just cut the chase, Petraeus. When are you going to recommend force reduction? And if you could, phrase your answer in the form of a circle."

Petraeus: "When the assessment is at a point that the conditions are met to recommend reduction of forces, then that's what we would do."

Stewart: "OK. . . . So what is the criterion for the assessment?"

Crocker: "When Iraq gets to a point that it can carry forward its further development without a major commitment of U.S. forces."

Stewart: "So the troops can be withdrawn at the point when the conditions for withdrawability are met. And at what point would those conditions be met?"

Petraeus: "When the conditions are met is when that point is."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles, Chan Lowe, John Sherffius and Nick Anderson on exit signs; Jim Morin on the lack of a paddle; Rex Babin on the Clash; Stuart Carlson on the Catch-22.