Bad Week Down, Bad Week To Come

by DemFromCT

After a week from hell for George W Bush, including "all indictment, all the time" on cable,  capped by the spontaneously coached amateur drill team that played 'Ask the President', we had the weekend spectacle of Sunni Iraqis soundly rejecting the new Iraqi Constitution while the Shi'a majority and the Kurds nonetheless voted it in. And the big picture (remember, this is what the CIA leak was all about)?

"This thing is an enormous fiasco," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan historian and a specialist on Shiite Islam. He said having such a solid bloc in opposition to the constitution "really undermines its legitimacy, and this result guarantees the guerrilla war will go on."

Success in Iraq -- still elusive 2 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion -- is critical to President Bush's hopes to provide a democratic anchor in a region long dominated by autocratic governments. But recent polls show a majority of Americans have soured on the invasion, a key factor in the president's low approval ratings.

Naturally, the WH called this a success, at least in public.

Publicly, administration officials hailed the result but privately some officials acknowledged that the road ahead is still very difficult, especially because Sunni Arab voters appeared to have rejected the constitution by wide margins. As one official put it, every time the administration appears on the edge of a precipice, it manages to cobble together a result that allows it to move on to the next precipice.

That's because going to war in Iraq was a historic strategic blunder, and lying about WMD's to get there is likely going to lead to indictments, and certainly going to cripple this administration going forward. The Onion seems to have gotten the message, even when the MSM hasn't:

In response to increasing criticism of his handling of the war in Iraq and the disaster in the Gulf Coast, as well as other issues, such as Social Security reform, the national deficit, and rising gas prices, President Bush is expected to appoint someone to run the U.S. as soon as Friday.

And not a moment too soon. But if Libby and Rove are indicted as expected, that's exactly what Bush will have to do. In fact, if he doesn't, he'll have to be President all by himself. And as Digby notes, that's no laughing matter. I expect a new team, a la Reagan after Iran-contra. The question is whether Bush will allow anyone near him who knows how to govern. He hates being shown up.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

more bad week, from the WSJ and John Fund. In an article on Miers, suggesting maybe that Dobson was assured she'd go after Roe:

Should hearings begin on Nov. 7 as is now tentatively planned, they would likely turn into a spectacle. Mr. Specter has said he plans to press Ms. Miers "very hard" on whether Roe v. Wade is settled law. "She will have hearings like no nominee has ever had to sit through," Chuck Todd, editor of the political tip sheet Hotline, told radio host John Batchelor. "One slipup on camera and she is toast."

Should she survive the hearings, liberal groups may demand that Democrats filibuster her. Republican senators, already hesitant to back Ms. Miers after heavy blowback from their conservative base, would likely lack the will to trigger the so-called nuclear option. "The nomination is in real trouble," one GOP senator told me. "Not one senator wants to go through the agony of those hearings, even those who want to vote for her." Even if Ms. Miers avoids a filibuster, it's possible Democrats would join with dissident Republicans to defeat her outright.

[DemFromCT]

Hmmm... from National Journal's earlybird:

"A special counsel is focusing on whether Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in leaking a covert CIA agent's name, according to people familiar with the probe that already threatens top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby," Bloomberg News reports. "The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former officials of" President Bush's administration "about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the agent's husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the people. Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney's communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president's knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff."

Unindicted co-conspirator? Libby clearly is in trouble, Rove a little less so. But who else?

A bad week, indeed.

[DemFromCT]

when it rains...

Strikes Kill 70 Insurgents, U.S. Says, as Vote Count Continues

Within hours of today's announcement by the U.S. military, news agencies reported that dozens of the dead were civilians.

[windansea]

Inaccurate Information About CIA Operative in Reporter's Notes Could Lead to Source
WASHINGTON Oct 17, 2005 — Information attributed to Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff in New York Times reporter Judith Miller's interview notes is incorrect, offering prosecutors a potential lead to tracking the bad information to its original source.

Miller disclosed this weekend that her notes of a conversation she had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on July 8, 2003 stated Cheney's top aide told her that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit in the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.

Whether it came from Libby or Miller's notes, former federal prosecutors and investigators said the incorrect information provides a significant lead for Fitzgerald and FBI agents to follow. It could suggest Libby thought Plame was not an undercover spy, and therefore couldn't have knowingly revealed her occupation, or that he got his information from uninformed sources, they said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1224295

[Bluto]

But..but...the crawler on Fox News said that Iraq is getting back to normal.