What Karl Rove Fears Most

"'That is far too late for the urgency of this problem,' said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.), who along with Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) has asked Bush for at least $550 million in emergency food aid now. 'If you're hungry and your government is collapsing, waiting until December 2008 or January 2009 for food to hit the ground is just too late.'"

Roger Thurow and John D. McKinnon write in the Wall Street Journal about another apparent example of Bush siding against monied agricultural interests. (I noted in Wednesday's column how Bush is fighting Democrats in congress to reduce farm subsidies to millionaires.)

Thurow and McKinnon write that Bush and his allies are trying use the food crisis "to push for major changes in the way the world community manages the fight against hunger. . . .

"The traditional U.S. approach effectively turns Washington into an intermediary for American-grown food to be shipped overseas at subsidized prices. That may alleviate immediate hunger, but it does little to deal with the fundamental issue: Africa's inability to feed itself.

"The head of the United Nations's World Food Program, an American, has been pushing for her program's dollars to flow directly to Africa's farmers and help build the kind of market -- with multiyear contracts, future pricing and the like -- that Western farmers take for granted.

"'As America increases its food assistance, it's really important that we transform the way that food aid is delivered,' Mr. Bush said."

Is Our Children Learning?

Sam Dillon writes in the New York Times: "President Bush's $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

"The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush's educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers. . . .

"Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the education committee, and who has long criticized the program, said, 'The Bush administration has put cronyism first and the reading skills of our children last, and this report shows the disturbing consequences.'"

Michael Grunwald wrote in The Washington Post back in October 2006 that even then "an accumulating mound of evidence" suggested "that Reading First has had little to do with science or rigor. Instead, the billions have gone to what is effectively a pilot project for untested programs with friends in high places.

"Department officials and a small group of influential contractors have strong-armed states and local districts into adopting a small group of unproved textbooks and reading programs with almost no peer-reviewed research behind them. The commercial interests behind those textbooks and programs have paid royalties and consulting fees to the key Reading First contractors, who also served as consultants for states seeking grants and chaired the panels approving the grants. Both the architect of Reading First and former education secretary Roderick R. Paige have gone to work for the owner of one of those programs, who is also a top Bush fundraiser.

"On Sept. 22, the department's inspector general released a report exposing some of Reading First's favoritism and mismanagement. The highlights were internal e-mails from then-program director Chris Doherty, vowing to deny funding to programs that weren't part of the department's in-crowd: 'They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.'"

Mission Accomplished Redux

Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post about how the anniversary of Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech (see yesterday's column) has become one of the Bush White House's least favorite days on the calendar.

"The White House pushed back with weapons of mass distraction. It issued a presidential proclamation declaring ' Law Day U.S.A., 2008.' Bush observed the National Day of Prayer in the East Room with a speech that shrewdly omitted any mention of the word 'Iraq.' When those two actions failed to make a dent in the Mission Accomplished coverage, the White House sent out an update announcing that the president would make a statement -- on food aid.

"But there was no escaping the anniversary. Those looking out of the north windows of the White House yesterday morning likely would have seen a demonstration organized on Pennsylvania Avenue where antiwar protesters unfurled a 50-foot replica of the Mission Accomplished banner. Alternatively, White House officials could have turned on cable news and seen the latest MoveOn.org ad showing candles on a cake with the 'Mission Accomplished' banner in icing."

Al Kamen rips into Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino's suggestion on Tuesday that "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.'"

Kamen writes: "The problem, sources tell us, is that White House planners couldn't figure out how to get all that on the sign in letters large enough for people to read on television. The sign would have been so big that either the wind would have shredded it or the ship would have drifted erratically while Bush's pilot tried to land on the deck.

"Another option would have been to simply put an asterisk after 'mission,' and then down below, in illegible print, say 'just for these sailors on this particular ship on this one mission.' Some thought that too tacky and warned it might prompt sailors returning on other ships to demand that Bush fly out to greet them.

"So that's why the banner came out the way it did."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board writes: "White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, apparently operating on a dying pair of AA batteries, said, 'President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,' said Perino. Yet, Bush used the same phrase a month later in a speech that had nothing to do with that specific ship and its officers. As terrifyingly adept as the Karl Rove-installed deus ex machina is at creating threats and victories out of a thin vapor of lies, it falters in dealing with the fact that much of what the architects of this war said and did in getting us there is recorded and reported. The American public doesn't suffer from the White House's brand of amnesia. Nonetheless, Perino continued, 'And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner.'

"She thinks the White House has paid the price? How about the 4,000 or so dead troops and their families? How about the injured soldiers and veterans? Or the ones being stop-lossed? How about the millions of Iraqis whose lives have been shattered by the violence and instability that our invasion brought into their country? And the losses continue to pile up. U.S. deaths have hit a seven-month high in Iraq, and life there and in Afghanistan, where raped women are imprisoned, is still hell. There isn't a banner in this world that could sum up what we've really 'accomplished' in the Middle East."

Sanchez Attacks

Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq from 2003-2004, has written a new memoir: Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story. In an excerpt published by Time magazine, Sanchez lays the blame for the post-invasion bungling in Iraq squarely on the man who fired him -- then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- and his superiors.

Sanchez writes that he didn't learn until 2006, while talking to military investigators, that the U.S. even had a plan for post-war Iraq. What he learned then was that there had in fact been an "operational concept that had been prepared by CENTCOM . . . before the invasion of Iraq was launched. It was standard procedure to present such a plan, which included such things as: timing for predeployment, deployment, staging for major combat operations, and postdeployment. The concept was briefed up to the highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the President of the United States.

"And the investigators were now telling me that the plan called for a Phase IV (after combat action) operation that would last twelve to eighteen months.

"To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had never seen any approved CENTCOM campaign plan, either conceptual or detailed, for the post-major combat operations phase. When I was on the ground in Iraq and saw what was going on, I assumed they had done zero Phase IV planning. Now, three years later, I was learning for the first time that my assumption was not completely accurate. In fact, CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job.

"That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

"There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. . . .

"In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."

Flowers for Helen

Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts write in The Washington Post: "It's kind of like spam -- just nicer, and more fragrant. Lefty heroine Helen Thomas is the target of an unusual Internet campaign this week: fans bombarding her with flowers after her face-off with Dana Perino . In the April 23 White House press briefing, the Hearst columnist exchanged words with the Bush press secretary about the president's okay of harsh interrogation tactics. Frustrated with the 'usual stock answer,' Thomas told us, she turned to other reporters and scolded: 'Where is everybody? For God's sakes.'

"A C-SPAN clip of Thomas lit up the blogs, prompting Micah Fitch to organize a mass thank-you-- more than 50 bouquets sent to Thomas's office so far this week, said Sefika Kurt, whose Little Shop of Flowers handled most of the orders. (More than 500 people contributed $4,300 to keep the flowers coming, according to Fitch's Web site.) Too much of a good thing? Thomas said she plans to share them with hospitals and friends."

Here are photos of just some of the flowers, including one shot of Thomas and Kurt surrounded by them.

Late Night Humor

Jon Stewart mocks Bush's proposal to help the economy by extending his tax cuts: "Are you suggesting we take the policies into this mess in the first place, and render the irrevocable?" And John Oliver tells Stewart the solution is simple: "Find the wand!"

Cartoon Watch

Ann Telnaes on Cheney's hunt for oil; RJ Matson on Bush as Jeffy; Mike Luckovich on "Mission Accomplished"; Lee Judge on Bush's own reading problem.