Dan Froomkin, Washington Post

Friends,
Froomkin's White House Watch in the Washington Post is invaluable when trying to "keep up with the players, without a program".
Rev O

"But, increasingly, it looks like the result of the bloodletting in Basra may be the U.S. more actively taking up arms in the messy, multi-sided civil war that the surge, rather than resolving, has apparently only postponed."

"Three days into a U.S.-backed government offensive, however, the Mahdi Army retained control of key neighborhoods of the southern port city of Basra and was able to prevent Iraqi soldiers and police from penetrating its strongholds. . . . "

"Tina Susman writes in the Los Angeles Times that "a fourth day of ferocious rocket and mortar attacks in and around the U.S.-guarded Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and most Iraqi government offices, underscored the anger among Shiite fighters who believe the United States and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are working to cripple Sadr's movement before local elections planned for this fall." "

"The Boston Globe editorial also notes: "An irony Bush may or may not comprehend is that he has put himself in the position of backing rivals of Sadr - Maliki's Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - that are intimately entwined with the Iranian regime. They would benefit enormously by taking over completely the lucrative port and oil pipelines of Basra and crushing the Mahdi Army before next October's provincial elections."

"None of this squares with the version of reality being spun by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Nothing they say about Iraq is believable. Both men continue to falsely link Saddam Hussein with the al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Both warn of the danger posed by al-Qaida in Iraq, though the vast majority of those wielding arms have nothing to do with the terrorist group. Neither will admit that al-Qaida was not in Iraq before the American invasion. Both claim that the war in Iraq has made America and the world safer from terrorism, yet the opposite is true. . . . "

John McCain, "Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war."
This came only a few days after Bush, in a videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan, said that he envied them. Tabassum Zakaria of Reuters quoted Bush as saying: "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you . . . in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger."
Notes my reader: "So, within weeks of each other, we have the GOP president romanticizing war and the GOP candidate calling people who romanticize war fools or frauds. Deliberate or not, the implication cannot be easily explained away. It seems that McCain has just publicly called Bush a fool/fraud."

Bush's Simplistic Vision Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post
The problems facing Iraq are much more complex than the president will acknowledge.