• It doesn’t matter. Saddam was a bad man and now he’s gone. Woo-hoo, we’re number one!
  
• The investigation of the document was done by a low level intelligence operative and never percolated up to the administration (it was done by an ambassador who was under the impression he was working directly for Cheney).
  
• The President had other evidence and wasn’t referring to the Niger document (no one has suggested what that evidence might be and this story has been dropped).
  
• The State of the Union Address was the work of Bush and a close circle of aids, so those who knew the truth never had an opportunity to correct it (it was finished ten days before being given and widely circulated).
  
• The CIA knew it was wrong and let Bush give the speech anyway; it’s all George Tenent’s fault; George, fall on this sword (George doesn’t seem to be going along with this).
  
• Although the CIA knew better, the British were fooled and Bush depended on the British for his intelligence, not on his own multi-billion-dollar intelligence agencies. It’s all Tony Blair’s Fault; Tony, fall on this sword (same as above).
  
• History will vindicate us (not if I can help it).

"Bring 'em on"? I'm so glad that President Bush has "restored dignity" to the White House, and I have no doubt the families of servicemen and women in Iraq must feel the same way today.
No wonder some Republicans think Arnold Schwarzenegger should be running the state of California. The real question is why we don't elect an actual cartoon character to office instead of all these cheap imitations. The Hulk's movie may be mediocre, but he obviously possesses the cool temperament, precise diction and witty style of a great commander in chief.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Wednesday challenged militants who have been killing and injuring U.S. forces in Iraq, saying "bring them on" because American forces were tough enough to deal with their attacks.

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is 'bring them on'. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

Bush Asks Congress For $30 Billion To Help Fight War On Criticism
WASHINGTON, DC—Citing the need to safeguard "America's most vital institutions and politicians" against potentially devastating attacks, President Bush asked Congress to sign off Monday on a $30 billion funding package to help fight the ongoing War On Criticism.

"Sadly, the threat of criticism is still with us," Bush told members of Congress during a 2 p.m. televised address. "We thought we had defeated criticism with our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We thought we had struck at its very heart with the broad discretionary powers of the USA Patriot Act. And we thought that the ratings victory of Fox News, America's News Channel, might signal the beginning of a lasting peace with the media. Yet, despite all this, criticism abounds."

[…]

Ashcroft said the Justice Department, working closely with the CIA and FBI, has identified more than 300 potential targets, ranging from the Bush Administration's inability to produce the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war with Iraq to its deficit-ballooning fiscal policies.

[…]

"I doubt I could protect my ongoing Halliburton cronyism from critical strikes with just a few million dollars—especially if it was not accompanied by powerful preemptive legislation," Vice-President Dick Cheney said. "We need to build stronger anti-criticism defense shields in this country. And the time to act is now, before the media say something negative about us."

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a Ten Commandments monument the size of a washing machine must be removed from the Alabama Supreme Court building.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed a ruling by a federal judge who said that the 2 1/2-ton granite monument, placed there by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

In its opinion today, the court rejected Moore’s assertion that government acknowledgements of religion have a long history in America. “Chief Justice Moore has pointed to no evidence that the Ten Commandments in any form were publicly displayed in any state or federal courthouse, much less that the practice of displaying them was widespread at the time the Bill of Rights was proposed and adopted,” declared the court.

The court also soundly rejected Moore’s contention that as chief judicial officer of Alabama, he is not bound by federal court rulings, comparing it to “the same position taken by those southern governors who attempted to defy federal court orders during an earlier era.”

Lingering U.S. resentment over France's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq has led the Defense Department to scale back sharply on its participation and, according to Washington insiders, put pressure on U.S. companies not to attend. U.S. exhibitors will total 183, down from 350 at the last Paris show in 2001.

U.S. defence contractor Northrop Grumman Corp said the political tension had put its plan to work with German submarine firm Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft AG to make eight submarines for Taiwan on ice. "Our ability to collaborate and cooperate in Europe has been affected by the tense state of relationships that exists," said Philip Dur, head of Northrop Grumman's ship systems unit. .

Q And also in the last, 2000 and coming up, the President will accept federal funds in the general election.

MR. FLEISCHER: Correct.

Q Is there any dash of hypocrisy in that he doesn't contribute to that fund when he files his tax returns?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, interestingly, we talked before about taxpayer-financed elections, and while for the congressional races, Senate races and House races, and for overwhelming majority of the funds that go to presidential races is voluntary, there is that check on the tax reforms. And the best I remember this from IRS data is something like only 12 percent, or down to 8 percent of the American people check that box. So I think the President is in pretty good company with a number of American people who do not check that box.

Q Why would he take the money, then?
MR. FLEISCHER: As you know, he's not taking the money for the primary campaign; he will take it for the general.
Q Does he prefer a privately-financed system altogether?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think he signed into law the system that he supports.

ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) - President Bush countered those questioning his justification for the invasion of Iraq on Monday, dismissing "revisionist historians" and saying Washington acted to counter a persistent threat.

"Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," Bush said in a speech to New Jersey business leaders.

Referring to the ousted Iraqi president, Bush said, "Saddam Hussein as a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted."

MR. RUSSERT: So if you did run for president, you would run as a Democrat?

GEN. CLARK: Well, I haven’t said that. I haven’t made any official moves. But this is a two-party country. There’s no successful third party bids. And, you know, it’s just—that’s the way it is. And I am concerned about many things in the country, not only foreign policy but domestic as well.
MR. RUSSERT: So you would run as a Democrat?

GEN. CLARK: Well, I haven’t come out and said that point blank. I mean, I think that’s another step that would have to be taken.

MR. RUSSERT: But you wouldn’t challenge George Bush in the Republican primaries?

GEN. CLARK: I haven’t considered that, no.

MR. RUSSERT: So it would be in the Democratic primary?

GEN. CLARK: You’re leading the witness here. I mean, that’s a step that I’ll have to work through along with everything else. You know, I’ve been non-partisan. I’ve got—I’m a centrist on most of these issues, and I’ve got people after me from both sides of the aisle. That are—a lot of Republicans have talked to me and they’ve said, “Look, we’re very concerned about where the country is. We’re moving into—not only have we done a war that’s essentially an elective war that’s put us in trouble afterwards, in an indefinite commitment”—and by the way I don’t hear—they don’t hear the strong voices out there about mission creep and exit strategy that dominated the 1990s dialogue. But a lot of Republicans have come to me and said, you know, “What does this mean?” And they’ve said, “On the other hand, we always believed that we should be the party of fiscal responsibility. And where are we going with the tax cuts? What does this mean for the future of the country?” So I’m getting, you know, interest from both sides, really and just haven’t moved past that.

We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about on the keys. He did not see us, and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion.

The details of his creative life make him blood brother to writing men. He cast himself with all I his force upon a key, head downward. So do we all. And when he was through his, labors, he fell to the floor, spent. He was vain (so are we all), hungry, saw things from the under side, and was continually bringing up the matter of whether he should be paid for his work. He was bold, disrespectful, possessed of the revolutionary spirit (he organized the Worms Turnverein), was never subservient to the boss yet always trying to wheedle food out of him, always getting right to the heart of the matter. And he was contemptuous of those persons who were absorbed in the mere technical details of his writing. "The question is whether the stuff is literature or not."