The Usual Spin Not Working for Bush

There's so much going on I haven't had a chance to digest it all. Here's a good post by Steve Soto of The Left Coaster on Condi Rice's feeble attempt to defend Bush from Bill Clinton.

And here's three posts by Mahablog on the attempt to limit the damage Clinton did to Bush, Condi Rice's pathetic attempts to limit the damage, and also on Bush and the NIE on Iraq; all three posts question Bush's 'War on Terror.' Bush is clearly floundering this week. The fact-checking on Mahablog, by the way, is superb. By the way, my wife, who's a good reader of body language, thought that Bush looked like a man who's afraid of something. I asked her if she thought he was worried about legal prosecution. She said maybe, but she wondered if he was afraid that his image was crumbling. She may be right. Bush's image is very important to him. Just remember how he strutted on board the Abraham Lincoln when the sign in the background said, Mission Accomplished. It's too bad there wasn't some reality behind the words.

Here's an article on General Batiste's testimony in Washington and also General Hammes criticism of Rumsfeld's Whack-a-Mole strategy in Iraq. I would like to see a fuller article on this and will keep looking.

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake has a statement from Nancy Pelosi on all the controversy on the NIE (it's about halfway down).

Here's a post from Democracy Arsenal that I have to include for such a straightforward title for a post: Bill Clinton Is Angry and So Am I.

And finally, Steve Clemons of The Washington Note tells us that John Bolton's attempt to be confirmed as UN Ambassador has failed, probably for good, though the Bush Administration may still use a manuever or two to keep him around (I think this would be a self-evident bad idea since Bolton's presence would weaken the position of the US at the United Nations but the Bush Administration doesn't always do what's rational). Clemons cuts Bolton too much slack in the end but I respect Clemon's longterm goal of trying to restore a bipartisan foreign policy.

Update (with corrected link): In an earlier comment thread, S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion mentioned a post he had done on leadership and the great example of John Kennedy owning up to his mistakes in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and accepting full responsibillity. It's a reminder of how different a man our current president is; Bush is a stubborn and angry man who's oddly unwilling to own up to his mistakes and our nation is not the better for it.