From CNN this morning:

Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, said Thursday that a pullout was needed to spur Iraqi leaders to action. He has recommended Bush announce the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal in mid-September, after a report is released from the top U.S. officials in Iraq, and that those troops should be back in the United States by Christmas...

In Texas, where Bush is on vacation, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the White House appreciated Warner's advice. But he said the president would wait for the recommendations of Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and the American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, before making any decisions.

Stop right there. It's common knowledge that the White House is actually writing the report.

So why perpetuate the fiction that the president is going to "wait" for a report when he's the one dictating the content?

All it takes is an extra sentence. Something like:

"Administration officials speaking off the record have said the general's report will actually be written by the White House, with input from officials throughout the government."

It took me two seconds to paraphrase/steal the sentence that was buried in the Los Angeles Times piece last week.

You don't even need loaded terms like "dissembling" or "spin" or "misleading" or "liarhead."

One simple sentence. That's all it takes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not that Karl Rove was some super genius for President Bush, manipulating the masses with his evil magic.

It's that so many people who should have known better took everything he was saying at face value.

It's one thing to have been following along blindly a few years ago - out of respect for the office, out of so-called patriotism, or whatever.

But after not being "greeted with flowers," after no WMD, after "last throes," after Katrina, after Gonzales, after Jessica Lynch, after Pat Tillman, after a stronger-than-ever al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden still at large - after all of these colossal miscalculations and failures, there is no more face value.

These clowns have no credibility whatsoever.

They should be the same laughing stock that Baghdad Bob was back in the day.

And yet still the president waits for the general's report.

And the dumbest soul rocker in Delmar cowers, goes fetal, sweating, shaking, waiting for it all to be over.

Labels: in the news