some reactions to the preznit's speech

Fred Kaplan: President Bush's TV address tonight was the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.


NYT Editorial: ...his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.


McClatchy Commentary by Joseph L Galloway: Well, now we’ve heard from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and President George W. Bush, and it appears that the Surge has succeeded — succeeded in guaranteeing that the Iraq War will drag on for the last 16 months of the Bush presidency at a cost of another 1,600 American dead and $13 billion a month.


TBogg: It's a shame that he was unable to reference Red Dawn in the speech. An occasional cry of "Wolverines!" would have really punched it up...


Booman Tribune's Steven D: In short, utter bullshit.


On a related note - Informed Comment: The Bush adminstration has presented a lot of statistics on Iraq this week. Aljazeera English presents some others.

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thursday reads

Dwane Powell / Raleigh News and Observer



"The US healthcare system is considered a dysfunctional mess," writes Ezekial Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics, in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.


A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.


The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.


CENTCOM Chief Fallon: Petraeus is "an ass-kissing little chickenshit"


Charlie Savage on how the Bush-Cheney legal team’s strategy of picking presidential lawyers to fill court vacancies has been an integral part of the groundwork it has laid for a long-term expansion of White House power.


Lawyers, Guns and Money: The Friedman Unit, circa 1877