Expect many lies to spill from the maw of George W. Bush.

Deceivers may be deceived:
They play a game that ends
In grief, and not in pleasure.

Sophocles, Oedipus At Colonus, ii

The last eight days have unfolded like the next-to-last act of a Greek tragedy for the President.  Payback is a bitch, baby.  Its an amazing feeling to watch everyone around you start to wake up to the terrible and obvious truth that you have been living with for thirty-three months.  We've dreamed of these days for so long that we thought they would never come.

Yet come they did, and with a poignancy and sharpness that no Greek tragedy could possibly hope to imitate.  The President, riding a lie for two and a half years, has been boxed in by its sudden evaporation.

What is even more amazing is the decisive nature of the comeuppance the President now faces.  We have all dreamed of the McCarthy moment, where the wrongdoer must face directly his errors, but never dreamed it could happen in a way so obvious to all that it cannot be doubted.  But the timing and effect of the downfall is stunning, even for those who hoped for it. The irony is reaching delicious new heights.  Bush, for months running a negative campaign against Kerry's consistency while emphasizing his own, is now forced to perform the ultimate flip-flop: to assert that while his earlier justification for launching an unprovoked invasion of another country was wrong, new information, not known until this week, still makes his decision the right one.  Nobody's buying it. 

Yet dangers remain for Kerry.  This debate is an unknown.  I suspect it will be the most interesting presidential debate in American history.  Bush may be able to convince the voters that because French politicians were allegedly on Saddam's payroll, no amount of alliance building could have gotten them on board.  Kerry better have Chriac's admission that he was about to give Bush 15,000 French troops for the invasion on the tip of his tounge. 

Kerry also has to deal with rising expectations as his debate performance and new status as frontrunner-apparent might trip him up.  Voters may expect an even greater performance from him this time and be disappointed no matter what he does.

But Bush is alone.  His conflation of bull-headedness with strength led him into the very trap he set for Kerry.  And, under the hot glare of TV lamps in St. Louis, no one will be on the stage to help.   

Bush Defends Iraq Invasion Despite Report

Oil Sets New $53 High Supply Concerns

Judge Holds NYT Writer In Contempt

I always think that if I went back in time four years, nobody would believe what happened to America.  And then something else happens that is even more unbelievable.

Things have been going from bad to worse over on the other side of the Potomac.  The Bush Cheney '04 camp in Arlington seems to be suffering setbacks by the hour.  Indeed, even its best efforts, such as last night's debate, seem to slip away in the light of the next day.  The campaign seems to be drifting and running out of ideas.  The hot light of media and blog attention is rapidly dismembering its 'lie early, lie often' strategy.  As the Kerry Edwards camp continues to build up a head of steam, there seems little Bush can do right.

Take the message on Iraq.  Bush arch-satrap Donald Rumsfeld slipped Monday and deeply undercut the al Qaeda-Saddam rationale by admitting that he had not “seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.” Even more stunning was the admission of Jerry Bremer, former CPA chief in Baghdad, that “the one thing that would have improved the situation - would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout."   Reporters quickly uncovered that Bremer had asked multiple times for more troops--requests that were denied by the White House.

Seemingly moments after these admissions had been fed into the news cycle, key Bush assertions about the rationale for the Iraq war were debunked by releases of phone book-sized government reports.  First, a comprehensive CIA report indicated that contrary to Administration claims, Iraq had voluntarily destroyed all of its weapons of mass destruction almost immediately after the 1991 Gulf War in an attempt to comply with U.N. sanctions.  Another CIA report stated that Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein had sheltered number-one-with-a-bullet Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could not be backed up with any conclusive evidence.  

It got worse.  Reports over the weekend also showed that the Administration was fully aware that the vaunted aluminum tubes which figured so prominently in Powell's U.N. presentation were not for nuclear enrichment purposes.

The press of events also seemed to be raining beat-downs on the Bush Administration.  As if on cue, the Iranian government admitted that it had been processing yellowcake into Uranium Hexafluoride, the first step toward enrichment into nuclear fuel which could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons.

All attempts by the previously high-flying Bush team to get their “pitch to zero” seemed to be similarly doomed.  At first take, the collective judgment had been that Vice President Dick Cheney had at least debated Sen. John Edwards to a draw, if not better.  But by morning, Cheney's claim that Edwards was so absent from the Senate that he had never met him while presiding over the senior chamber was dismantled by legions of bloggers armed with photos of him and Edwards together. 

Cheney's attempts to bolster his lies with reference to a fact checking website led to another blunder.  The Administration's resident Sith Lord erroneously directed viewers to a parked domain name by mixing up the .com and .org in the name.  Staffers at the hosting company noticed the spike in visitors and promptly directed the traffic to George Soros' new website, which screamed “President Bush Is Endangering Our Safety, Hurting Our Vital Interests and Undermining American Values.”  By evening, Newsweek's lead story was “Rewriting History: Cheney's Assertions in Debate Open to Question.”  Running right next to it at the top of the MSNBC website?  NO IRAQI WMD. Damn.

The twin parades of bad news and blunders collided with a third: The Polls.  Rasmussen's daily Prez Track poll showed Kerry pulling even with the President for the first time in weeks.  The Washington Post tracking poll had Kerry surging to within two points of Bush.  Coming on top of the weekend's Newsweek poll showing Kerry leading, the news could not be worse.

The Bush response?  As usual, more of the same.  Bush's “significant speech” designed to turn the tide was a barely-altered version of his stump speech.  Rove's lie, lie, lie and lie again strategy left Bush little room for maneuver.

Breathing room?  You know there is none.  Bush, coming off the disastrous Thursday Night Massacre, must come back big Friday night to stay in the race.  He'll need all the Klonopin in the world just to stay on the stage.

Bush's  Presidency suddenly hangs in the balance.  To echo the famous Six Million Dollar Man intro, he truly is a “man barely alive.”  Can Rove rebuild him?  Signs point to no.

Editors Note: Today we offer our first guest post from GH:

"We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America.  He was listed by Republican and Democrat administrations as a state sponsor of terrorists.  There was a risk -- a real risk -- that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks.  In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

A close look at this section of Bush's "significant" speech today supports my hunch: Bush has made a subtle, yet significant, departure from his justification for invading Iraq.

From now on (or until Bush slides further in the polls and Rove dreams up an October surprise), Bush's "my-story-and-I'm-sticking-to-it" will be not that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S., but rather a "potential" threat.  But not a threat in the sense that Colin Powell argued to the United Nations - that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons - but rather a threat in the sense that Saddam might "pass information to terrorist networks."

So now we have it: the justification for a $200 billion quagmire with over 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed, thousands more permanently disfigured, and God knows how many Iraqi deaths?  Because Saddam might let terrorists know the Bush family's fondness for pork rinds.

By softening the justification for the war, Bush can claim that he is doing everything in his power to protect America and its citizens.  No WMDs and no imminent potential for developing WMDs?  No problem.  The risk was still too great because Saddam is an EVIL DOER and therefore he had the potential to DO MORE EVIL at some mythical point in the future if we hadn't stopped him.  Shoddy intelligence?  Perhaps, but the nature of intelligence gathering is an art form, not a science - there are no certainties.  All we can do is act upon a hunch.  And even if the intelligence was wrong, we still had the MORAL AUTHORITY to go to war preemptively because Saddam is an EVIL DOER and he had the potential to DO MORE EVIL at some mythical point in the future if we hadn't stopped him.  Not enough troops?  We had a sufficient number of troops to topple the regime.  I know we had a sufficient number of troops to topple the regime because we succeeded in toppling the regime.  In fact, we toppled the regime so swiftly that we didn't have time to add more troops to secure Iraq and its borders and to provide paramilitary support for the new regime that the brave Iraqi people will have the privilege of electing in January.  But no matter, we're adding more troops now, even though we've always had a sufficient number of troops to get the job done.

Got that?

So Rob, your hunch was right, but Bush has not taken a page out of the playbook of William Jefferson Clinton.  It’s more like a page from Orwell: American leaders have the moral authority to do as they please because Americans are morally superior to everyone else.  Thus, there is no need to justify any action taken by American leaders, because any action will always be right.

Or in Orwellian prose: Four legs good, two legs bad.

Looks like I gave those guys at Bush Cheney way too much credit.  There was literally nothing new in the “significant speech.”  You'd think they would be focus grouping that “Global Test“ shtick.  It ain't playing too well with the undecideds.

Looks like they have nothing new for the American People.  Apparently it will be nothing but terror alerts and Xanax from here on out for the President's reelection campaign.  Its clear that they are going to try and get their base revved up as much as they can and toss the undecideds out the window.

Grampa Evil by a hair.

Update (Wed. 12:17 PM)

I think there was a lot for both parties to be happy about in the debate.  The spin seemed more normal this time, like a regular debate, with each side's partisans claiming victory and no clear-cut winner.  This favors the Democrats, of course, as Cheney needed something more to counteract Thursday's clear drubbing of Bush.

All and all, the debate left me cold.  Edwards missed some clear shots, but Cheney was not believable.  Edwards should have stayed on the question asked more.  His reliance on talking points was his biggest negative.  Bush proved that the electorate is so saturated by talking points that a candidate parroting them appears out of touch, because they have all been heard before. 

But Edwards was at his best when it counted--at the beginning during the Iraq questioning.  He clearly threw Cheney off his game and set the tone for a good forty-five minutes, the same forty-five minutes that the viewers were most attentive to. 

The Iron Mouth staffers, (well, most of them), will be at a DNC House Party fundraiser in Washington, D.C. this Friday during and long after the debate.  If you are interested in meeting us and contributing $25 to the Democratic National Committee, drop us an E-mail at ironmouth@gmail.com.

Obviously, some sort of major campaign strategy shift is underway right now at the Bush Cheney camp.  Not only did Bush Administration Iraq heavies Rumsfeld and Paul "Mullah" Bremer make seemingly frank admissions that there was no Osama-Saddam link, and that not enough troops were on the ground, but suddenly, Rep. Charlie Rangel's famous "Draft" bill from last year is being put on the “Suspension” calendar and rushed to the floor without debate, or committee hearings. 

This is what we call a stunt.   A major shift is underway over at Bush Cheney.  Only time will tell if this a panic move, or an adjustment.  One thing's for sure.  Our boy got them off their original game plan.

Hat tip: Josh Marshall

Today, the Washington Times leads with a story that the President is scrapping a speech on medical liability and preparing a "significant speech" for Thursday night.  Presidential aides say it will cover terrorism and the War in Iraq, and attempt to counter attempts “by the president's opponent to launch false attacks and mislead the American people on these big priorities.“  Translation: look for Rove to pull one out of the playbook of William Jefferson Clinton.  

I fully expect Bush to say that he has made mistakes, that he thought there were WMD, but that there were none, that he thought there was an al Qaeda-Iraq link but there was none, and that despite all of this, he is the candidate that is best suited to fight in Iraq and against terrorism in general. 

How can I make such a bold prediction?  Two reasons: (1) Karl Rove always likes to strike at his opponent's strength, which for Kerry right now is Bush's own errors in Iraq; and (2) Key players in the Iraq fiasco have signaled in the last two days that the assumptions on which the war was based were flawed and serious mistakes were made in first few months of the war. 

First, let's deal with Rove.  The President's number-one hatchet man is known for striking at an opponent's strength.  Right now John Kerry's strength is the President's own position on Iraq and the War on Terror.  Last Thursday, Bush appeared out of touch and defensive on what was supposed to be his signature issue.  

Meanwhile, Kerry put to bed any doubts about being indecisive with his manly (yes, manly), defense of his position on the war.  The flip-flop issue melted under the hot lights in Miami.

The problem for John Kerry is that his strength relies totally on the continued obstinate pollyannish stupidity of his opponent.  Should Bush admit to the problems that our efforts in Iraq face, Kerry is back at square one, albeit a square he's been trying to get the election to from the beginning--the issues.

Once Bush pulls a Clintonian “I've made mistakes,” then Rove can try to make the race about personality--people do genuinely like Bush and want to believe he is a nice guy.

Signals sent by senior administration officials also hint that a reversal of field is coming from the Bush/Cheney camp.   Rove is also known for clearly signaling his moves to the media as well.

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking of al Qaeda-Iraq ties before the Council on Foreign Relations, said that there was no “strong, hard evidence that links the two.”  Although he later “clarified” the statement, the message got out and stuck.

Similarly, statements by former Ambassador Paul Bremer made at a speech at a conference Monday indicated that he thought that the Administration did not have enough troops on hand to control Iraq after the ground war ended.  Bremer also made similar remarks at a speech at DePaw University on Sept. 17.  Conference organizers suspiciously distributed the gist of those remarks on Monday as well.  Although Bremer too, “qualified” his remarks later on Monday, its doubtful that he would have made such potentially damaging remarks in the middle of the Bush reelection campaign without approval from the heights of the Bush/Cheney campaign.

What the tea leaves seem to indicate is that Bush is planning to reverse his field and declare that he has made mistakes, but that it would be best to keep the reins in his hands until the job is done.  I also would not be surprised to hear that the Administration has plans to increase troop strength in Iraq to get the job done right.

Thought this election was weird?  Just you wait.

Update (12:42 Tuesday): The speech has been changed to Wednesday.

One of Iraq's former leaders has decided to give democracy a try.  He is petitioning to run in January's elections.  Polls show him to have the support of 42% of Iraqis.  Finally, a stablilizing force emerges out of the chaos of Iraq.  Bush should be thrilled.  Except that Iraq's new savior is Saddam. 

Iraq, the grave of this new age.  The story of the election, the year, the decade.  I doubt not that this war will be long remembered. 

But getting a handle on exactly what is going on there is difficult.  Lead Wingnutter Instapundit suggests The Belmont Club: History and History In The Making.

Its not hard to see why, as Australian Blogger Wrechard the Cat often waxes lyrical:

Guadalcanal . . .the Island of Death upon which Japanese naval and military reinforcements were dashed heedless and seriatim

But Miltonian prose and Matthew Arnold quotes do not an accurate military analyst make--this is the Internet and credentials are the key to believability--Alas, Wrechard has none. 

From an E-mail exchange earlier this year:

-----Original Message-----
From:
To: wretchardthecat@hotmail.com
Subject: Credentials
Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 10:04:12 -0400
Hi,

My questions to you are (1) are you a currently serving/prior military officer/enlisted? (2) If so, which branch and MOS? Do you have combat experience? I usually would not be so picky, but you seem to have no identifying information on your blog of any kind indicating the level of trust I should place in your observations.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wretchard The Cat wretchardthecat@hotmail.com
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 2:53 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Credentials
No I am not nor have I ever been a serving member of the military.
Regards,
W.

And his sources?

-----Original Message-----
From: Wretchard The Cat wretchardthecat@hotmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 2:52 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Credentials
Readers, links to out of the way sources I've developed over time. One good source is the FreeRepublic. Whether you agree with the politics or not, the news posts are great.
Regards,
W.

That's right: Free Republic, the arch-temple of high wingnuttery.

So, where's the intelligent reader to turn?  Flit, of course.  Blogger Bruce R. works in Toronto, but occasionally is called to work for another employer, the Canadian Armed Forces, where he is a reserve officer.  Bruce rose to prominence during the invasion, when his posts brought sanity to spin.  His incredible maps using NATO standard symbols are much missed. 

The moral of the story?  Due diligence my friend, due diligence. 

From France today, we learn that a joint French-Spanish task force has captured this man:

Mikel Albizu Iriarte was the leader of the ETA's political wing.  ETA has carried out a decades-long terrorist campaign to create a Basque homeland in the mountainous border regions of France and Spain.  The two countries have recently begun to cooperate very closely in the eradication of their common terrorist threat.  20 others were captured with Iriarte, along with a large weapons cache. 

Terrorism knows no boundaries.  Usually terrorists will use one country as a base and attack in another, as we saw in the infamous “Hamburg Cell” which carried out the September 11th attacks. 

But without strong alliances, such as those advocated by Senator John Kerry, terrorists will succeed in using borders as shields and prevent the U.S. from disrupting terrorist networks and stopping attacks.  One member of the Hamburg Cell,  Mounir al-Motassadek, the group's treasurer, had to be set free, because the U.S. refused to cooperate in his prosecution.   

Strong alliances are needed to fight terrorists around the world.  George W. Bush's go it alone stance has cost us dearly in our struggle against terrorists.  John F. Kerry promises to strengthen our old alliances and build new ones to help bring terrorists to justice.  Its time for a new strategy.  Help is on the way. 

Yes Sir!  From Deride and Conquer.

 http://home.earthlink.net/~houval/gopconstrm.mov

The irony of the debates was that the Bush campaign banked strongly on beating Kerry in a physical sense.  They hoped that Kerry's physical appearance would cause voters to turn against him.  Yet it was Kerry's powerful physical presence, combined with Bush's slouched defensiveness which led to a Kerry victory.

The debate rules included lights on the podiums to let viewers know when the candidate's time was up.  Bush strategists negotiated for “rules that would make it clear if Kerry was breaking the rules, like time limits imposed on the candidates' answers reinforced with timing lights visible to the debate audience and television viewers.” 

Republican handlers also negotiated to keep both candidates at their podiums in order “to take away some of Kerry's strengths, such as the former prosecutor's ability to move about.”  

Similarly, Republican flacks flooded the media zone with stories of Kerry's skin tinted strangely orange as if he had used a no-sun tanning solution. 

But the Republicans were a victim of their own propaganda.  They had mocked Kerry's supposed predilection for long statements for so long that they believed it themselves.  The Bush camp spent so much time trying to box in the other candidate, they forgot about their own.

As a result, Kerry not only skillfully used the timing lights to his advantage, closing out each timed response as the final light flashed with an excellent one-liner, but Bush several times flubbed the lights up, either asking for more time long before the timer had run out, or worse, finished his answers before the time limit was up, awkwardly nodding to moderator Jim Lehrer to indicate he was done.

Similarly, Kerry stood straight, as Reagan had twenty-four years earlier, and used his hands in an offensive way, often using a chopping motion to get points across.  In contrast, Bush several times defensively pointed to himself with both hands and slouched at the podium. 

The result was obvious.  Kerry physically dominated Bush.

We got the big bounce.  Time to pour it on.  Know an undecided?  Time for a talk.  Have a local paper?  Write a letter.  It does not matter if you are in a battleground state or not. 
Its simple math.  The more players on our team, we win.

An analysis of the new Newsweek poll numbers indicates that not only did Kerry win Thursday night's debate, his team also won the post debate spin wars.  An ABC News poll, taken right after the debate, showed that voters thought Kerry won the debate 45 percent to 36 percent.  CBS polls also showed a convincing win for Kerry, 43 percent to 28 percent. 

But Newsweek's post-debate poll showed that registered voters believed Kerry trounced the president 61 percent to 19 percent, a forty-two percent lead for the senator.  For anyone at all familiar with polling, these are big, big numbers.

Why the change?  Simple--by late Friday, the conventional wisdom in the blogs, papers and on the TV networks had concluded that the debate was a big win for Kerry, and the public opinion followed along. 

How did the Kerry team pull it off?  Kerry's new and improved media team are the masters of rapid reaction, having honed their craft in the impeachment wars of the last decade.  The results were on full display on Friday, with the Democratic National Committee releasing a video featuring Bush's hit parade of childish looks.

Winning the post-debate spin was as important as winning the debate itself.  Gore suffered badly when he lost the critical spin game.  Voters who watched the debates felt Gore won, but those who had not thought Bush won, based on critical media interpretations of his performance.

Should Kerry continue his new-found dominance in the spin game, Bush will face a long, uphill battle to regain what he lost Friday.

The Iron Mouth is not an aggregator blog which passes on reports from others.  However, this one was too good to pass up.  In the latest Newsweek poll, Kerry has reversed his post-RNC decline and pulled ahead 47-45 in a three-way race with Nader amongst registered voters.  In a two-way race, the lead is 49-46 for Kerry/Edwards.  We just be gettin' started folks.

You know your boy got schooled when the Washington Times runs a story entitled “President to Hone Skills For Debating” on Page 1.  A little late, isn't it?

Karen Hughes, on Fox, last night, explaining why we went into Iraq.

HUGHES: September 11th, we were attacked. That's the difference.

QUESTION: Not by Iraq.

HUGHES: Terrorist who want to gain informational materials to develop weapons of mass destruction; Iraq clearly had that capability.

Apparently we were afraid Hussein would be handing out brochures.

Despite my long support for Governor Dean, John Kerry showed us why he is the Democratic nominee for President.  Howard Dean could not have done what John Kerry did last night.  Kerry was presidential.  Indeed, if I had to compare his debating style to anyone, it would be Ronald Regan. 

Only Kerry could have brought home the message that Bush has sold short the country and the troops, that Bush's military decisions, far from being on target, have been colossal blunders.  Dean, excellent speaker that he is, simply cannot bring the kind of gravitas that Americans need during times of trouble. 

The nation also found out that George W. Bush does not have that kind of gravitas either.  His fumbling of questions, defensive body language and prickliness does not inspire confidence.  It is hard to believe that this man runs our country.

George W. Bush showed he was not a leader last night in Miami.  John F. Kerry demonstrated to all that he has the poise and equanimity to lead the world's greatest nation.     

The Washington Times headline screams: Bush rips Iraq flip-flops, but below the fold it says: Political strategists declare debate a draw, especially when the “Democratic Strategist“ is some shill for the polluters, whose office at the firm is next to Marc Racicot, Chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004.

Drudge leads with: Estimated 55 Million Watch: TV Viewership For Debate Over 2000 Levels.

And all the Weekly Standard can say is “A Mixed Bag For Both”

I'm having so much fun
With the
Poisonous People
Spreading rumours and lies and stories
they made up

David Bowie, “Candidate”

Feel like the world is slanted against Kerry?  Feel like there's no way people could be buying Bush's parade of lies, yet the news is reporting them as truth?  Afraid of Bush winning? 

The fact is, people aren't believing Bush's lies, and Bush isn't winning.  No one can win a game before it starts, and gametime most definitely is November 2, 2004.  Polls test only the attitude of the voters before the election, and the polls right now are decidedly mixed.

But if this is so, why does it seem like the media is reporting the election as if Bush is winning? The answer is simple: spin.  Karl Rove wants us to feel like we will lose.  If he can, he might win the election. 

Literally, at this moment, Karl Rove has thousands of people working night and day to convince you that Bush will win.  They are manning phone banks, calling reporters to push stories, and arguing with reporters that are writing stories that might hurt them.  The Bush campaign is spending millions on getting you to believe that a Bush victory is all but inevitable. 

Our task is to beat the spin.  Think of it this way.  Bush is spending millions to convince people he's going to win, because he has a terrible record.  So every time you hear bullshit on the news asserting that Bush is winning, think to yourself--Bush can't win a game that hasn't started.  Then mentally subtract $100 from Bush's war chest.  Every time someone tells you Bush will win, convince them its not true.  Subtract $1,000 from the Bush campaign.

This is a war of perceptions.  Start fighting it.