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The news is craptastic for the Bush Administration lately, isn’t it? 

– What does Tony Blair’s #2, the British Deputy Prime Minister, think of George Bush?  "Crap."

– Speaking of crap, Tony Snowjob is full of it.  Apparently, according to the current WH press secretary, one hundred dead people a day in Iraq is simply an ordinary day that no one should find notable whatsoever:

…there has been some improvement at least in the situation on the ground, slightly. Yes, you have a number of sectarian violence operations going on, but you’ve also seen now in targeted neighborhoods in Baghdad, there has been a notable decrease in violence in three of the neighborhoods that have been targeted in the last week, and that’s obviously a promising sign; that’s not a victory lap.

Not a victory lap?!? Well, that may be the understatement of the century.  Wanker.

– And what does it mean when Republican pundits start using words like idiot, unrealism and delusional to describe President Bush?  It means his horrid job is trickling down on everyone else in the party, and they aren’t happy having to clean up after Bush’s messes.  (Taylor had much more on this yesterday in a fabulous post.)

– Swopa points out that we’ve lost a war that wasn’t even declared and that most of us never even knew we were fighting.  Well, heckuva job, Bushie…moving up to more efficient and swift failures.  (Oh…merde.  Speaking of which, Swopa also has an update on the mess that is Anbar province.  And you thought Baghdad was having problems…)

– Laura Rozen pulls a great quote from the NYTimes that shows Bush’s frustration that the Iraqis aren’t more grateful toward us.  You know, because their lives are all candy and roses…well, not so much.  But hey, let’s blame the Iraqis because…well, they ought to be grateful that their whole country could explode into even more violent war any minute and that the Bush Administration refuses to own up to its mistakes and help make the mess we started better.    Logic truly is a lost concept in DC, isn’t it?  Just keep repeating "adapt to win" and click your heels together three times and wish for world peace.  (And look out Dick Cheney…you’ve pissed off Tom Friedman…maybe he’ll cool off in 6 months or so.)

– Ian Welsh has some comparisons between the rebuilding efforts in Lebanon over the last week and what the Bush Administration hasn’t managed to do in nearly a year since Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, NOLA, and Texas.  (To be fair, the state and local governments also have responsibilities, as do the individual citizens and their insurance companies on all of this.  But the Federal government has made loads of promises that are just sitting out there…not being properly followed through, and it’s about damn time someone started asking why it is that a half-functioning government in Lebanon and an Islamic militant group is more capable at helping to rebuild a battered area of the country than the Bush Administration, when we have all these resources at our disposal in the US of A, and they have bombed out cars and not a hell of a lot else.  Yes, accountability is a bitch.)

– Bush poll numbers?  In the crapper.

– Howie has a great new Neil Young video that calls out the Bush Administration’s "environmental" policies.  (And I don’t mean the use of composted manure on the shrubs at the WH either.)

I could keep going.  Really.  The news is that bad at the moment.  (Glenn has a whole post documenting how even the right-wing blogs have been bitching about George Bush and his failed and misguided policies lately, so don’t think it is just us.)

But I think Froomkin said it best yesterday:

When it comes to Iraq in particular, Bush has no interest in engaging in genuine dialogue with people who disagree with him — even though polls suggest those people now represent a large majority of the American public.

He has no interest in actually arguing the merits of his approach, or substantively defending against the increasingly focused critique by congressional Democrats.

Rather, he describes his approach in platitudes, and uses inflated rhetoric to mock the made-up arguments of imaginary opponents. He counts on the skillful use of imagery and human backdrops to deliver his very simple core message — "I am protecting you" — without actually making his case.

He hides behind the presidency.

Just sums up the whole Bush Administration in a nutshell right there, doesn’t he?  Where does that leave us for the next two plus years with Bush at the nation’s helm? Up shit creek without a paddle.

…but at least we still have Wolcott.

(H/T to reader Scarecrow for the first two links of the day.)

UPDATE:  Found this via Atrios, and it’s a doozy:

“The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels,” said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”…

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Oh, really? And I thought that Tony Snow said that there was an improvement of things on the ground. Snowjob, indeed.

The American public deserves the whole truth — especially the portion of the public that has family and friends who are actually risking their lives for this Administration’s continued failures. If the Bush Administration’s goals have shifted away from democracy in Iraq, then what exactly are we fighting for now? Let’s see, WMDs?  Nope. Democracy? Apparently off the table. So what now? Are they risking their lives to provide CYA for George Bush? Because that’s not good enough.  How about some truth for a change…