Bizarre Press Conference

I'm watching George Bush screaming at the top of his lungs like the old man telling kids to get off of his lawn, spouting a list of willfully blind statements about Iraq, North Korea, the election. Nobody believes him anymore. His credibility is shot. Nobody's even listening anymore. That's why he has to yell.

The Lancet has published a study that 600,000 people have died in Iraq. To that the President says "it's not credible" and we're making good progress. The President is confronted with electoral realities in the midterms and dismisses them. He claims "we care about how people live" in North Korea and lets people die in Darfur. He claims "I should try all aspects of diplomacy" with regard to North Korea and somehow claims that all aspects of diplomacy were exhausted in Iraq. He claims that when the Iraqis stand up we'll stand down and at the same time the Army readies to maintain troop levels in Iraq through 2010. He claims that the Democrats will "raise your taxes" when as President he could veto any tax bill. He claims that we support and respect our troops and he sandbags the best lawyer in the military by forcing him to retire.

The President is invisible until he accepts any measure of reality.

UPDATE: Here's the President on the Lancet study, which incidentally measures how many Iraqis have died, no matter the cause, due to circumstances of the war as opposed to circumstances if the war didn't exist (so it's not measuring casualties, but deaths approximately caused by invasion and civil war. See this for more.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN: Thank you, Mr. President. Back on Iraq, a group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 655,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war. That figure is 20 times the figure that you cited in December at 30,000. Do you care to amend or update your figure and do you consider this a credible report?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don’t consider it a credible report, neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died and it troubles me and grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.

Yeah, they TOLERATE violence. They aren't running for their lives or locking themselves in their homes or leaving the country. They're just tolerating it. THEY HAVE NO CHOICE! And you have no strategy to stop it.