During a dissection of Tom Goldstein's take on the war, Sifu Tweety cuts to the heart of the matter--Bush has always seen the primary battlefield in our current spate of wars as the United States.  No wonder he hasn't won over there--he's wasting his time fighting "Demmycrats" over here instead of actually paying attention to the war over there:

Here’s my little translator’s key to this emerging talking point: Republicans attach incredible importance to media criticism of the war, because they genuinely believe that the war is won and lost IN THE MEDIA. The American media, that is. Their partisan selves are so thoroughly embedded in the culture-jamming electioneering of the Rovist personality cult the GOP has become that they genuinely don’t recognize the difference between actually achieving peace and a non-doomed secular democracy in Iraq, and just being able to plausibly claim that peace on American TV.

The gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Remember this ditty about the three virtually empty Carnival Cruise ships meant to house Katrina survivors that cost the government over $230 million.  Well, Henry Waxman, having gone through e-mails provided by former FEMA head Mike "Brownie" Brown, is asking why it appears Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had a big hand in pushing the deal through. 

Before you ask, yes, Carnival Cruise lines is a big donor to the Florida and National Republican parties.

Nancy Grace of CNN has an annoying habit of bending the truth.  A lot.  Its no suprise then that the New York Observer has found that her struggle with truth is endemic to her very existence.  (Thanks, Atrios).

In February, Ms. Grace’s staff was ordered to attend a three-hour workshop on reporting basics to help remedy “lax journalistic standards,” according to a CNN source. The session covered issues such as the meaning of “off the record” and the number of sources it takes to confirm a piece of information.

[I]n 2005, the 11th Circuit Court in Georgia declared that Ms. Grace had “played fast and loose” with facts in her 1990 triple-murder prosecution of Herbert Connell Stephens. In 1997, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned an arson-murder verdict, finding Ms. Grace had withheld evidence from the defense; in 1994, the same court had overturned her conviction of a heroin trafficker, finding problems with her closing argument.

Its only a matter of time before she really steps into it.

My grandfather and I were shopping in the street markets near his apartment, on Thayer Street, far north Manhattan, in the Washington Heights neighborhood. I was just a few years old. This was and still is a big Spanish market. My grandfather didn’t speak much English, so we conversed in a blend of Spanish and English. We were out looking for a toy gun – back then, they were still sold in black – as my parents wouldn’t let me have one.

As ever in the market on a Sunday morning, people of all colors were bustling in every direction, bumping into each other, trespassing onto the street, shouting to each other over the long and short distances. Papers covered the walls of the shops and the light posts, and blew all through the streets.

We were on a particularly busy thoroughfare, filled with sun, almost noon. It was quite hot – the dirty, city kind of hot that you can feel. The sidewalk burned.

That was when I saw them.

They were a couple. The man wore a beard and that rounded hat I now know to be Muslim topping his black face. The woman wore a black full burqa – I could see only her darting eyes and the glistening black skin around them. They walked up the sidewalk together silently, at a slight distance.

What I remember was that every step they took broke up the crowd. Everyone was looking at them. Every shopkeeper peered up from his wares to mark the passing of these two, and all the buyers and talkers and hustlers in the street stopped what they were doing to watch this couple. Sentences ended midway. No one ran before them.

At my young age, I was equally puzzled as I was impressed. Who were these two wearing so much black in that heat and strolling so seriously that everyone so loud and vibrant just moments before could be struck dumb? At that age, I already had ideas of what faith was, having done my best to juggle Judaism and my grandmother’s devout Catholicism already all my life. But what was the power of this faith (for I quickly knew faith was at the core of this scene) that it should part the human sea of the market at morning?

They moved closer, till they were passing just before me. I still don’t know what look I saw in that woman’s eyes. Was it a flash of fear as she walked straight on? The man she was with wove among the crowd somewhat more. His expression may have had a bit of delight in it, as he searched around, perhaps for what they had come to market for.

When I got home, I asked my mother about these people. She was liberal and knowledgeable, but didn’t elaborate, perhaps because it would be too complex to explain to someone my age.

I think this was the moment I first knew that Islam would ever be a factor in my life, in all our lives, in the streets of the world and in our national interests. I have never stopped trying to figure out what look I saw in that woman’s eyes.

No Iraqi Battalion Capable Of Fighting Without U.S. Support.

JULES
Yeah.  I was just sitting here drinking my coffee, eating my muffin, playin' the incident in my head, when I had what alcoholics refer to as a "moment of clarity."

From The Corner:

PAGING KARL ROVE--EMERGENCY! [John Podhoretz]

Rasmussen has a new poll up in which -- hold on now -- Democrats in Congress are outpolling President Bush on national security. By a margin of 43 to 41 percent, Americans say they trust Congressional Democrats more than Bush when it comes to protecting our national security. And by a margin of 64-17 percent, they oppose the sale of the ports to Dubai.

The deal is dead. It won't survive after a 45-day extension or a 450-day extension. Congressional Republicans have no choice but to be extremely aggressive and nasty toward the president and the White House, because they will be properly terrified of looking like Bush's lapdogs on a hugely unpopular matter that goes to the heart of the Republican party's political advantage in the United States.

If the White House doesn't handle this well in the next three days, the political consequences could be catastrophic. (Hat tip: Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics.)

RE: PAGING KARL ROVE [Rich Lowry ]

Emergency, indeed: if Bush loses his edge on national security, he has nothing left.

Looks like its their "moment of clarity" over at the National Review Online.

Only at Fox would they be trying to find a scenario by which an all out Iraqi civil war would be a good thing?

From a Rasmussen Poll: 

For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President.

Laura Rozen asks us to guess who thought up the plan to do a study of how to destabilize Iran by recruiting non-Persian ethnic groups living along its border.  My guess is the same infamous foreign policy wonks that thought the Soviet Union would be brought down by dropping weapons to non-existent partisans in places like Latvia and the Ukraine pretty much up until the fall of the Berlin Wall.  I'll give you a hint: they're just coming off planning a major military and strategic blunder and looking to do something along the same lines.

The Bush Administration's priorities are on full display with the Ports scandal:

Do the terrorists win when we attack the wrong country enraging Arab opinion?  No.

Do the terrorists win when we hold prisoners in an area where our own laws do not reach?  No.

Do the terrorists win when we circumvent our own laws in order to conduct illegal spying on Americans?  No.

Do the terrorists win when we torture our prisoners?  No.

Do the terrorists win when we illegally seize suspects in other countries, hold them in former gulags and then send them off to other nations to be tortured?  No.

Do the terrorists win when people complain about a sweetheart deal to run the ports of the U.S., given to a company owned by a country which has ties to bin Laden, which does not recognize the state of Israel, and whose record on stopping smuggling and terrorist operations in their own port is terrible?  Apparently, yes:

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the Senate Armed Services Committee that blocking the deal could ostracize one of the United States' few Arab allies. "The terrorists want our nation to become distrustful," England said. "They want us to become paranoid and isolationist, and my view is we cannot allow this to happen. It needs to be just the opposite."

After everything this Administration has done to make the American people be scared to death of terrorism from the Middle East, the statement is laughable.

I was listening to the news the other day when a report came up about the bill that makes abortion illegal in South Dakota and I was struck by one of the sections of that law which says that life begins when sperm fertilizes egg.  I'm having trouble finding more specifics about the law but there is text of a similar piece of legislation from May 2004 with similar language.  I guess my question is does this law effectively make certain types of birth control illegal?  If life begins when sperm meets egg but fertilized egg is unable to plant itself in the uterus due to say an IUD or the pill does that constitute medicine or an instrument that causes an abortion, and if not, why? 

I think Joe over at Americablog is on to something by looking at the ironic nature of the Administration's defense of the port deal.  Their latest line is that not letting the deal go through or engaging in some sort of double-standard would be utterly disasterous for our reputation and foreign policy goals in the Middle East but watching Iraq, an Arab country at the geographical center of the Middle East, invaded by the United States three years ago, descending into civil war.....ahhhhh, evidently not so much?  I should have probably titled this post: There's Predictions that come true and predictions that come true!

Much has been written about how the port of Dubai has been linked to money laundering, nuclear proliferation, drug smuggling as well as terrorism, but Digby brings us this Robert Parry piece describing how the port was apparently used to facilitate the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri.  It appears UN investigators were able to track the truck stolen from Japan that was used in that car-bombing to the port of Dubai but after that the trail suddenly went cold.  No word on how helpful Dubai port authorities have been in providing more information for the investigation.

We can try to find some way work with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, or go out of our way to try to undermine it, in which case the Iranians and other regional supporters of radical Islam are prepared to step in with assistance.  Pretty complicated, no? 

It'd be nice to have a foreign policy built on something other than wishful thinking and an utterly reactive lack of foresight.

Update (2/24/06): Looks like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are aslo supporting Hamas and the PA regardless of what we decide to do.    Did it really only take a few years for the world's only superpower to lose so much influence and clout?  And is it just me or does that CNN headline suggest that the UAE is going to tell Sec. Rice the same damn thing?

In case you missed pictures of the shrine in Samarra that was blown up by insurgents yesterday, Eric Umansky has a before and after picture of the shrine of Imam Hasan al-Askari.

I think Josh makes a good point: If Dubai Ports doesn't have any connection to or responsibilities for security under this deal, why are we making them pledge to abide by current security arrangements or requiring them to cooperate with counter-terrorism investigations? 

Once you've digested that, ask yourself why we would then tell DP World that they don't need to keep any business records on US soil so they would not be subject to possible subpoena or court order?

The Bush Administration not only didn't go through with all the reviews stipulated by law before approving the UAE port deal but also decided to dispense with certain routine restrictions common to such agreements in order to accomodate the UAE owned company.

I guess we just have to trust them on this one because lord knows the Bush people have never gotten us into trouble by cutting corners or secret deals before, have they? 

Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency's director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States.

These are the owners of the company that will be running our ports.  Any questions?  (via Atrios).

Fox News is reporting that President Bush is threatening to veto any bill that might threaten the deal to turn over several major U.S. ports to a UAE state owned management company.  Damn we must owe them big time!

My advice to Congress is  slap that legislation together and make him go through with his threat-- there are few downsides to taking on an unpopular and out of touch lame duck President over a questionable political deal (feel free to mention post-9/11 viewpoint here) that has clear national security implications.  Besides, can there be a more empty threat then George W. Bush saying he'll veto something?  One of the only President in history who hasn't vetoed anything in six years in office? 

If he feels so strongly about it make George W. Bush go out on a limb and fight for a deal most Americans, let alone his supporters, would find simply incomprehensible after he's beaten the 9/11 horse to death for almost five years.

Odd?  Usually the Bush people pull a Reagan and go out of their way to praise a program while cutting its budget but it appears that over the weekend we saw the reverse; the Energy Department had to come up with over $5 million over the weekend so that 32 workers and researchers laid off due to major budget cuts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory could be on hand when President Bush made a visit to the facility to promote his new "end our addiction to oil" energy policy.  Excuse: Clearly a mix-up in budget priorities over at DOE?!? 

Makes you wonder what other projects will suddenly have to be saved due to poorly thought out policy proposals thrown into the State of the Union at the last minute for political reasons?

In pour the Germans.

(Pictured, the German breakthrough at Sedan, 13-14 May, 1940).

The ungarded rear of the Bush administration is where he doesn't control--countries who have assisted him in violation of their own laws.  He can do nothing to influence court proceedings there.

Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of the man, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent who was arrested Dec. 31, 2003, in Macedonia before being flown to the Kabul prison.

The German police official identified as "Sam" denied that he had visited Mr. Masri in Afghanistan and said he was "on holiday" at the time in Germany, but that he could not remember exactly where. The man was present on Monday at the police station, where Mr. Masri picked him out of a 10-person lineup.

Oops!  Picked a senior guy in the green police out of a line up!  In the good ol' U.S.A. he's halfway to conviction with that one.

Look for this trend to continue.

Update 2:00 AM Wed.  The Eastern Front: Ex-Malaysian Leader Says He Paid Abramoff

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush.

Abramoff and Bush.  Quite a ring to it, no?

Veteran sportscaster Curt Gowdy, dead at 86.  His was the first major voice of sports I remember, followed very closely by Howard Cosell.  Gowdy covered it all, from sportsmen's shows to baseball to the big one, Super Bowl I.  He was a connection to an earlier time before TV.  Gone but not forgotten.