Out of Africa

Looking befuddled, the President, speaking today from Uganda, abandoned his increasingly vague justifications for remarks contained in his State of the Union speech to hide behind the alleged approval of the intelligence services. According to the AP, President Bush said:

``I gave a speech that was cleared by the intelligence services,'' the president said. ``It was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers.''

The President’s half-hearted comments are an attempt by frantic White House staffers to quell a rising tide of domestic and world criticism over the use of faked intelligence in what the Brits call the Dodgy Dossier.

"What is now clear is that there are those in this administration that misled the president, misled the nation, and misled the world in making the case for the war in Iraq. They know who they are. And they should resign today."
Governor Howard Dean

"It's time for the president to tell the truth that we lack sufficient forces to do the job in Iraq and withdraw in a reasonable period, to tell the truth that America should not go it alone."
Senator John Kerry

But the Dodgy Dossier fallout wasn’t the only event to happen this week.
Reports of unhappy and ill equipped American soldiers continue to appear in a variety of sources.

Along with other reports that suggest American forces are now at the breaking point, retiring CentCom Commander Tommy Franks inappropriately provided cover to our intemperate President by using the “bring ‘em on” remark in change of command ceremonies in Tampa (Franks' quotation not included in linked story).

Heroic Senator Bobby Byrd, by dint of florid vocabulary, forced the usually domineering Defense Secretary to admit to monthly Iraq military costs of $3.9 billion.

And, possibly ham-strung co-chairman of the Presidential September 11 Commission Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton publicly announced to an indifferent press that government agencies have not provided material requested as necessary to the investigation of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside alQaeda, appeared before the 911 Commission Wednesday and then spoke to reporters about the infamous alQaeda meeting in Malaysia during January 2000.

According to Gunaratna and the only publication that quoted him Ananova, alQaeda called the precisely planned September 11 attacks Operation Holy Tuesday and that Malaysian meetings included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed was in charge of the Malaysia meeting and told some of the other terrorists there the targets would include the World Trade Center and the date of the attacks would be September 11, 2001, Gunaratna said. His statements reveal bin Laden's terror team picked the date of the 9/11 attacks nearly two years before those strikes were carried out, dispelling theories that the hijackers acted on their own and might have accelerated their plans after Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001. Gunaratna said of Moussaoui: "He had a vision of crashing a plane on the White House, but his colleagues did not take him seriously."

Oh, yes, and our prim Presidential couple along with one of their hell-raising twins and the attendant world press had to endure the sight of elephantine coitus. Poor presidential babies! We thank God that Senator Rick Santorum wasn’t amidst the blushing Bushes.

Photos: Associated Press

- posted by Sean @ 3:49 PM