[Mb-civic] Fw: NYTimes.com Article: Send In the Gowns

[Ian]

I just love this woman...

Peace.

----------------

Send In the Gowns

 July 15, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

The president and the first lady said the twins weren't public figures, yet
here are their figures in public.

 The strapless sisters are helping a campaign that's increasingly strapped.
Barbara and Jenna, glamming like the Hilton sisters, are in gowns in Vogue,
and in vogue on the trail, giving Dad some much needed cover by uncovering
their shoulders.

 With even Republicans like Pat Roberts, the head of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, questioning whether the president would have launched a war
against Iraq if he'd known how weak his case was, Mr. Bush needs all the
distractions he can get.

 There was faint support yesterday for Mr. Bush's feint on gay marriage. W.
thought he had a bit in the maverick's mouth, but John McCain bit back,
bolting over to the Democratic side to help embarrass the president by
defeating the constitutional amendment that dare not speak its name. Senator
McCain scorned the amendment banning gay marriage as "antithetical in every
way to the core philosophy of Republicans." (Well, some Republicans.)

 When the British report came out yesterday declaring that Saddam Hussein
had no significant W.M.D., or perhaps no W.M.D., Tony Blair accepted "full
personal responsibility" for "the way the issue was presented and,
therefore, for any errors made."

Mr. Bush, by contrast, took full personal irresponsibility. Still pressing
the preposterous case that he has made America safer, even though we are
inundated with threats from Al Qaeda, and that he is winning the war against
terror, even though there are more terrorist attacks, the president had to
go farther afield to find a sufficiently enthusiastic audience.

 Instead of fleeing to Canada to dodge a war, W. had to flee practically to
Canada to defend a war. In the middle of July, the president was campaigning
in the middle of nowhere, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - the first
president to bother to trek up to Nick Adams country since William Howard
Taft.

 Mr. Bush must have left the buck in deer country because the White House
keeps passing the blame to the same C.I.A. that Dick Cheney and his Pentagon
henchmen leaned on to supply the rationale they needed for the war they were
determined to launch.

 They're trying to turn George Tenet from lapdog to scapegoat, while letting
Dick Cheney, the 800-pound gorilla who tried to turn the little C.I.A.
analysts into parrots, continue his rumble in the jungle.

 If this sounds like "Animal Farm," it is. What is more Orwellian than
President Bush's rhetorical fallacies?

 Campaigning at the nuclear lab in Oak Ridge, Tenn. - he finally found
nuclear-related capability - Mr. Bush defended the Iraq war: "So I had a
choice to make: either take the word of a madman or defend America." He also
said of the terrorists, "We will confront them overseas so we do not have to
confront them here at home."

 That's nonsense. Just because more terrorists are attacking Americans
abroad doesn't mean terrorists aren't poised to also attack us at home. And
in fact, Bush officials keep warning us that terrorists are planning
"something big" here, as the acting C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, said
yesterday in a radio interview.

 It's just like the president's other false dichotomies: You're either with
us, or you're with the terrorists. If we don't stop gays from marrying, it
will destroy the institution of marriage.

 His illogic's flawless and may be catching. A Washington Post poll
published yesterday found that 55 percent of Americans like the way Mr. Bush
is handling terrorism, up five points in three weeks. So even though the
poll showed that a record high number of Americans say Mr. Bush's war was a
mistake, more Americans trust Mr. Bush to make the U.S. more secure.

 Many voters think that the president and vice president are unjustifiably
putting lives at risk by going to war with a false premise and creating more
terrorists. But many voters are apparently dithering because they are too
wary of the alternative to boot out Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

 The nub of this election is that John Kerry has so far failed to convince
voters that he'll do what Mr. Bush promised to do and hasn't: go after Osama
and Al Qaeda and destroy them. Unless Mr. Kerry can make that sale,
Americans face not a false dilemma, but a real one.