The rightwingers love to soften the impact of the trouble in our occupation of Iraq by resorting to the "it's too soon to tell" excuse. One analogy that several have used is that "if you had looked at our position early in WW II, you'd have thought for sure we were going to lose.

Well, that sounds pretty good on the surface. But how far along are we in Iraq, now? What point in time of WWII is analogous to this point in Iraq?

When does a "clarification" simply make things more ambiguous?  When it's offered up for political reasons by a member of this White House's loyal crew of semantic warriors.

Yesterday's Washington Post reports that Alberio Gonzales recently "clarified" his early February testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Now it's so clear that Vermont Senatory Pat Leahy said:

Gonzales's letter falls "far short of helping us focus this picture. Instead, they blur it further with vague responses about their shifting legal analysis for this illegal domestic spying and with unclear clarifications on the scope of the program over the last four years."

Raw story this morning offers up the text of the brief thank you note that Alito sent to Ralph Dobson.

As noted here many, many times before, our feckless leaders simply refuse to admit the truth about what's happening to American jobs and to the finances of the nation.  The policy is to define "the economy" as corporate profits and stock prices, while distracting attention from the sorry state of workers by:

Harping on spurious unemployment statistics

Breathless reports of "new jobs"

Baldly claiming that those nasty old tax cuts are working 24-7 to create even more jobs

They keep this charade up despite the publicly available grim figures on what's been happening to American jobs, including exactly how many have been lost and how wages have been affected.

If you read today's headlines about Iraq, it's hard to even think the name George Bush without a rush of fury. Now that the curfews are lifted, the reports keep coming, each upping the estimate of the dead for this day, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2006: 30 dead, 37 dead, 41 dead, 46 dead, 56 dead, 66 dead, 68 dead, 75 dead.  Bombings, shootings, artillery fire.

We sit now with the first clear, undeniable view of the road down which we have been speeding since George Bush adopted his doctrine (adapted from the Project for a New American Century [PNAC]) that preemptive military action on the part of the United States was the only way to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the evildoers of the month.

Say what you want about disgraced Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He believed in giving his customers a convenient way to shop!

Continuing America's neverending drama of corruption among the powerful and secretive, the Boston Globe today carries a story on the Orthodox Church in America (described as an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church). The church's former treasurer says church officials misappropriated millions of dollars donated by retired chairman of Archer Daniels Midland Co., Dwayne Andreas, US military chaplains, and ordinary parishioners across the country.

Scotland's the Scotsman has the details from the police report on President Bush's fall from his bicycle while in Scotland last July for the G8 meetings, a fall which caused him to crash into a Constable who had to be sent to the hospital.

Part of the story:

After a hard day's discussion with fellow world leaders, the president was looking for some relaxation. Instead, he ended up the subject of a police report in which the leader of the free world was described, in classic police language, as a "moving/falling object".

I swear. We need a new category here at WTW, something we need to call "Gee, didn't I tell you this was a load of....?"

Remember all the Republican outrage over the sale of six American ports to a UAE-owned company?

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