Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq and expertise on the geography of the Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in capturing the Al Qaeda chieftain:

"I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it."

No doubt, McCain hasn't been shy when it comes to explaining how he'll bag Bin Laden. Over the course of the campaign, Senator McCain has repeated his pledge to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and follow him "to the gates of hell."

For example, in May 2007, McCain described himself as the dog that'll hunt:

"We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of Hell."

Then in October, McCain told workers at a small weapons factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

And in January, McCain reassured suspicious South Carolina voters as well, just in case they had missed his earlier promises on the point:

"My friends, I want to stand before you now and tell you that if I have to follow him to the gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden and I will bring him to justice. I will get him!"

In New Jersey last month, McCain pledged, like President Bush before him, that he would get Bin Laden, dead or alive:

"I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college's Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

"We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water," McCain said.

(McCain, of course, was speaking metaphorically. Referring not to aquatically proficient spies who would make their way overland to Waziristan after first swimming across the Indian Ocean, McCain was instead describing agents capable of seamlessly mixing in among the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan.)

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that McCain will tap Mitt Romney as his running mate. Their shared commitment to get Bin Laden may have something to do with Romney's appeal to Mr. StraightTalk. After all, in May, Romney also made a promise when it comes to Osama Bin Laden. "He's going to pay," he said, "and he will die."

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

The steady stream of bad news about Afghanistan this week served to highlight two inescapable truths regarding the conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. First, Barack Obama was right that the ongoing commitment of American forces in Iraq is preventing the United States from successfully pursuing Al Qaeda along the Pakistan frontier. Second, the Bush Doctrine - with its tenet of no safe havens for terrorists - is still dead.

In Washington, President Bush acknowledged that June, which saw the highest U.S. casualties of the Afghan war, was a "tough month." Bush, who is reported to have recently ordered U.S. intelligence assets and Special Forces to make a final push to capture Osama Bin Laden, then promised more soldiers and Marines for the fight. As Time rightly noted:

"We're going to increase troops by 2009," Bush said, without offering details about exactly when or how many.

The President would have done well to first consult with Admiral Michael Mullen, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. On the very day that 2,200 U.S Marines learned their tours in Afghanistan will be extended by 30 days, Mullen admitted to reporters at the Pentagon that the United States could only deploy more forces there by first drawing down from Iraq:

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."

Unfortunately, that "reduced requirement" in Iraq doesn't appear likely to happen time soon. As the AP reported last week, the Pentagon is preparing to rotate 30,000 troops in a move that maintain U.S. force levels in Iraq at 15 combat brigades through 2009. While General Petraeus may yet recommend further force reductions, American troop levels at 142,000 are currently slated to remain above pre-surge levels through next year.

Failing the commitment of additional forces by NATO members, the U.S. is going to have to rob Peter to pay Paul when it comes to choosing between the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his joint Senate testimony with General Petraeus in April, U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker to Baghdad acknowledged to Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) that the Afghan-Pakistan border region was the higher priority for the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda:

AMB. CROCKER: Well given the progress that has been made again Al Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities, the fact that it is solidly on the defensive, and not in a position of -

SEN. BIDEN: Which would you pick, Mr. Ambassador?

AMB. CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

SEN BIDEN: That would be a smart choice.

Crocker's trade-off is precisely the one advocated by Barack Obama throughout the 2008 campaign. As he has insisted repeatedly, the Bush administration let Al Qaeda off the mat in 2002 and with its solitary focus on Iraq, has taken its eyes off the prize. As Obama put it just two weeks ago:

"The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors - the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11...

...Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership - the people who murdered 3000 Americans - have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That's the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism.

We had al Qaeda and the Taliban on the run back in 2002. But then we diverted military, intelligence, financial, and diplomatic resources to Iraq. And yet Senator McCain has said as recently as this April that, 'Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq.' I think that just shows a dangerous misjudgment of the facts, and a stubborn determination to ignore the need to finish the fight in Afghanistan."

As it turns out, Obama is right, and George W. Bush and John McCain are wrong, on both counts. As Admiral Mullen readily admitted, overstretched American forces in Iraq are simply unavailable for the campaign against Bin Laden. And as a devastating account in the New York Times Monday revealed, the Bush administration's diversion of assets to Iraq and its confused policy towards the Musharraf government enabled Al Qaeda to establish a safe haven in Pakistan.

Dating back to the moments after the September 11 attacks, "no safe havens" emerged as one of the three pillars of the Bush Doctrine. (The other two - preemptive war and democracy promotion - arose with the invasion of Iraq.) In his address to Congress on September 20, 2001, a determined President Bush declared his "no safe havens" principle even as the World Trade Center towers still smoldered in lower Manhattan:

"We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

But seven years later, an Al Qaeda safe haven in the Pakistani tribal regions is precisely what the United States now encounters. As President Bush himself confessed in the wake of a July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate:

"One of the most troubling [points in the NIE] is its assessment that al Qaeda has managed to establish a safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan."

Little has changed since. As the New York Times details, the new Bush policy of authorizing unilateral strikes against Al Qaeda leaders and the deployment of U.S. Special Forces into Pakistan remains stymied by disagreements within the administration and with the new government in Islamabad. (Ironically, John McCain attacked Barack Obama for the same aggressive posture towards Al Qaeda in Pakistan that President Bush later adopted.) Despite the new-found willingness of the U.S. to act alone within Pakistan, Bush's past dependence on Musharraf and Musharraf's truce with tribal leaders sympathetic to Bin Laden and the Taliban had left Al Qaeda firmly entrenched:

"It is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world."

To paraphrase Chevy Chase from the old Saturday Night Live news sketches, the Bush Doctrine is still dead. For Barack Obama's part, he's still right when it comes to America's unfinished business with - and the White House's diversion of resources from - Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. As for President Bush and John McCain, they're still wrong.

During a town hall meeting in New Jersey on Friday, Republican presidential nominee John McCain reiterated his pledge to "get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." Amazingly, McCain was able to make his promise without his signature line about following Bin Laden to "the gates of hell." Even more amazing, McCain cited swimming as the skill American intelligence operatives will need to help him do it.

McCain promised his Garden State audience that he, unlike George W. Bush, would get Bin Laden dead or alive:

"I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice," McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college's Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

"We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water," McCain said.

McCain, of course, was speaking metaphorically. Referring not to aquatically proficient spies who would make their way overland to Waziristan after first swimming across the Indian Ocean, McCain was instead describing agents capable of seamlessly mixing in among the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But when it comes to metaphors for tracking down Osama Bin Laden, John McCain can always be counted on to make that proverbial chase to the gates of hell. In May 2007, McCain described himself as the dog that'll hunt:

"We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of Hell."

Last October, McCain told workers at a small weapons factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

And in January, McCain reassured suspicious South Carolina voters as well, just in case they had missed his earlier promises on the point:

"My friends, I want to stand before you now and tell you that if I have to follow him to the gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden and I will bring him to justice. I will get him!"

As McCain has also pointed out, his willingness to journey to hell (if not back) to capture Bin Laden has made him the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda. Of course, as ThinkProgress noted, McCain also claims to be the worst nightmare for Hamas, for pork barrel spending and, needless to say, Democrats.

Which means that John McCain's worst nightmare (at least politically) is the prospect that George W. Bush beats him to the gates of hell and catches Osama Bin Laden before November. According to the Sunday Times today, President Bush has ordered American special forces and intelligence assets to do just that.

For all of our sakes, let's hope that goes swimmingly.

In excerpts from his upcoming book (Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice) published in Slate, Eric Lichtblau describes the surreal effort of the Bush White House to squash the New York Times' revelations regarding its patently illegal warrantless wiretapping. Lichtblau describes a last-ditch effort by the administration to dissuade the Times during a December 2005 meeting at the White House:

As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren't sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House's efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.) As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.

For more than an hour, we told Bush's aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: "It's all the marbles." The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The cliches did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.

The Bush administration's claims, of course, were without foundation. But faced with the failure of its baseless fear-mongering in preventing the New York Times from shining a spotlight on President Bush's clear wrongdoing, the White House then commenced a campaign of retribution.

After the revelations about the NSA program by the New York Times on December 16, 2005, President Bush raged three days later about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy". Claiming he didn't order an investigation, Bush added "the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation" At a subsequent press conference that same day, Alberto Gonzales suggested the retribution that was to come:

"As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, as the President indicated, this is really hurting national security, this has really hurt our country, and we are concerned that a very valuable tool has been compromised. As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, we'll just have to wait and see."

Americans didn't have to wait long. In August 2007, a team of FBI agents raided the home of Thomas M. Tamm, a veteran prosecutor and former official of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) within DOJ. As Michael Isikoff detailed in Newsweek:

The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.

The Bush administration's amen corner among the conservative chattering classes was not content to rest with a witch-hunt for the NSA whistle-blowers. They wanted revenge against the New York Times itself.

In 2006 testimony before Congress and again in an August 2007 rant, Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld urged prosecution of Lichtblau, Risen and the paper:

"With the investigation making progress, the possibility remains that even if the New York Times is not indicted, its reporters - James Risen and Eric Lichtblau - might be called before the grand jury and asked to confirm under oath that Tamm, or some other suspect, was their source. That is what happened to a whole battalion of journalists in the investigation of Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame fiasco.

If Risen and Lichtblau promised their source confidentiality, they might choose not to testify. That would potentially place them, like Judith Miller in the Libby investigation, in contempt of court and even land them in prison."

To date, neither Risen nor Lichtblau have faced criminal sanctions for their Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the illicit NSA warrantless surveillance. And while that may be yet to come, that doesn't mean the reporters aren't already in legal hot water.

On February 1, 2008, the Times revealed that Risen had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in an effort to force him to reveal his confidential sources. But that subpoena did not concern his 2005 reporting on the NSA domestic spying program. Instead, the Justice Department wants Risen to divulge his sources for a chapter on Iran's nuclear program in his 2006 book, State of War. In it, Risen describes CIAs unsuccessful efforts during the Clinton and Bush administrations to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. So while conservatives were quick to applaud the news of the subpoena for Risen, many still fume that it concerned the wrong offense.

No doubt, the Bush administration's war on the New York Times is far from over. The right-wing rage machine groused over the paper's publication of revelations that the United State clandestinely helped Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal. (Again, the Times deferred to the White House for over three years before printing the story.)

For his part, Eric Lichtblau concludes that the New York Times' decision to proceed with the NSA domestic surveillance story was undoubtedly the right one:

"More than two years later, the Times' decision to publish the story - a decision that was once so controversial - has been largely overshadowed by all the other political and legal clamor surrounding President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program: the dozens of civil lawsuits; the ongoing government investigations; the raging congressional debate; and the still-unresolved question, which Congress will take up again next week, of whether phone companies should be given legal immunity for their cooperation in the program."

Almost on cue, Attorney General Michael Mukasey last night reached a new low in hyping the need for telecom immunity. Speaking in San Francisco, an emotional Mukasey choked up while playing the 9/11 card on President Bush's behalf:

"We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that."

That shameless fear-mongering and duplicity shows the Bush administration mindset that the New York Times - and the American people - are up against.

The life of the American conservative is a perpetual crisis of cognitive dissonance, especially when it comes to the run-up to the Iraq war. So three new stories this week are certain to cause right-wing minds to explode, or at least to seek the safe harbor of denial.

First came word of a new book from Rumsfeld aide Douglas Feith revealing that President Bush declared "war is inevitable" in December 2002, months before UN weapons inspectors produced their report on Iraq's WMD. Later this week, the Pentagon will release the results of its massive study of pre-war intelligence confirming that Saddam and Al Qaeda had no operational relationship. Last, the Senate Intelligence Committee will soon publish its long-delayed critique of the Bush administration's claims in the buildup to war with Iraq.

Little in Feith's upcoming book, War and Decision, appears new. His revelation about Bush's December 18, 2002 ultimatum merely confirmed the President's use of the UN as a PR smokescreen for the conflict to come. Even less surprising is Feith's finger-pointing at others, especially Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA, General Tommy Franks and Iraq viceroy L. Paul Bremer, for the calamity his own manipulation of intelligence helped produce. (After all, Powell aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said of Feith "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man," while Franks deemed him simply "the f**king stupidest guy on the face of the earth.") Given the devastating February 2007 Inspector General's report on undersecretary Feith's "inappropriate" briefings and "unreliable" intelligence regarding the Al Qaeda-Iraq link, his 900 page score-settling tome due next month was inevitable.

And just in case there were any lingering doubts about Feith's fraud on the Saddam-Al Qaeda nexus during his tenure as Donald Rumsfeld's defense policy chief, his former colleagues at the Pentagon lay them to rest this week. As McClatchy detailed yesterday, the DoD study will confirm the findings of the 9/11 Commission:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.

The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.

Finally, the Senate Intelligence Committee is set to release - at long last - its findings on the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence. Held up for four years by former committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), the Senate panel will examine of pre-Iraq war claims by President Bush and his administration intentionally left out of its "Phase I" report released prior to the 2004 election. (Despite the Committee's insistence that an investigation of White House misuses of pre-war intelligence not be part of the scope of Phase I, Roberts joined other GOP watercarriers in continuing to proclaim, "we interviewed over 250 analysts and we specifically asked them: 'Was there any political manipulation or pressure?' Answer: 'No.'")

As the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, while the upcoming report likely won't go far enough in its assessments for partisans on either the left or the right, the Intel Committee conclusions will present more bad news for the Bush administration and its amen corner:

The long-delayed document catalogs dozens of prewar assertions by President Bush and other administration officials that proved to be wildly inaccurate about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of banned weapons and pursuit of nuclear arms.

But officials say the report reaches a mixed verdict on the key question of whether the White House misused intelligence to make the case for war.

The document criticizes White House officials for making assertions that failed to reflect disagreements or uncertainties in the underlying intelligence on Iraq, officials said. But the report acknowledges that many claims were consistent with intelligence assessments in circulation at the time.

Because of the nuanced nature of the conclusions, one congressional official familiar with the document said: "The left is not going to be happy. The right is not going to be happy. Nobody is going to be happy."

Judging from initial reactions to this latest wave of pre-Iraq war revelations, the discomfort of the right will likely be greater.

Reacting to the McClatchy story, the conservative Gateway Pundit experienced a complete a cognitive shutdown. In denial over the Pentagon story confirming the absence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link before the war, this blogger in the last throes of cognitive dissonance could only pretend instead that McClatchy was denying the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq today:

"Just when you thought that the mainstream media had hit rock bottom...McClatchy Newspapers reported today that there is no Al-Qaeda in Iraq..."

The vast cottage industry of right-wing politicians, pundits and authors, too, will have to confront facts completely at odds with their unshakable (and irredeemably wrong) narratives. Saddam-9/11 conspiracy theorist and Paul Wolfowitz favorite Laurie Mylroie will have to reconsider her entire body of work (for example, here and here). And 9/11-Iraq fabulist and Cheney biographer Stephen F. Hayes, author of the thoroughly discredited screed, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, might want to take another look at his notes.

In Hayes' case, unfortunately, those notes are the source of the problem. As ThinkProgress detailed, Hayes' thesis relied on Feith's invented Al Qaeda-Saddam connection, fabrications rejected by the Pentagon at the time - and ever since:

In 2003, Hayes declared "case closed" in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. ("[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago...That's your best source of information.") Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes' article, stating the Feith memo was "not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."

It's no wonder hardcover copies of Hayes' book are available at Amazon for the eminently affordable price of 1 cent.

In 2006, Stephen Colbert famously summed up the conservative intellectual dilemma in what might be deemed Colbert's Law: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Confronted with a flood of inconvenient facts, the right-wing instead resorts (as the endless Cheney-Hayes-Feith loop above illustrates) to its own brand of circular logic.

With the torrent of pre-Iraq retrospective stories, expect another public bout of conservative cognitive dissonance.

UPDATE 1: Here's a look back at President Bush's false statements on the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection.

UPDATE 2: ABC News on Wednesday morning reported that the Bush administration is in essence censoring the Pentagon report on the nonexistent Saddam - Al Qaeda link:

This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online...The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

An executive summary is available here.

As the New Hampshire primary approaches, a desperate Mitt Romney has emerged as a vocal defender of the foreign policy of George W. Bush. On Sunday, Romney developed a full-blown case of Bush envy, echoing the President's 2001 spaghetti western threat by saying, "I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive." To be sure, by alternately downplaying or emphasizing the importance of capturing Bin Laden as political circumstances require, Romney has indeed taken a page straight from the Bush playbook.

In his frantic attempts to fend off Mike Huckabee and John McCain, Romney has tried to differentiate himself from the two occasional critics of Bush foreign policy. Mimicking Bush's unfortunate 2001 comments about an American "crusade," Romney on Sunday proclaimed, "We are doing God's work now, in my opinion by keeping al Qaeda and Hezbollah from establishing a safe haven." He then went on to offer his bounty on Bin Laden:

"I want to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive."

Of course, Romney didn't always feel that way. In April 2007, a more sedate Mitt Romney pooh-poohed the importance of getting Osama Bin Laden:

"It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

But facing withering criticism from his GOP rivals, Romney had a change of heart during a Republican debate just days later. Romney-turned-Rambo declared that his presidency would signal that the end is nigh for Bin Laden:

"He's going to pay, and he will die."

With his flip-flop, Romney was merely following Bush's Iron Law of Bin Laden that states the threat posed by the Al Qaeda chieftain is directly proportional to the threat to the President's political standing.

Trying to fight back the growing public outcry over his illegal domestic wiretapping program in January 2006, President Bush used the Bin Laden bogeyman once again during remarks at the National Security Agency. Bush lashed out at his critics:

"All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously."

Bush, of course, did not take Bin Laden seriously in five years ago. Questioned about his silence regarding Bin Laden in the months following the American failure to capture the Al Qaeda mastermind in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a nonchalant Bush on March 13, 2002 downplayed his significance:

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

Bush may have been embarrassed by his failure to capture Bin Laden in 2002, but by the fall of 2004, he faced the prospect of American voters who seemed to recall the murder of 3,000 of their countrymen. In the third presidential debate with John Kerry, a childlike Bush on October 13, 2004 tried for a "do over" of his statement two and a half years earlier:

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden."

Which brings us full circle. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush used the specter of Osama Bin Laden to rally what had been a faltering presidency. In a show of frontier bravado, Bush talked tough about Bin Laden just days after the 9/11 attacks:

"There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"

George W. Bush, of course, was worried about public approval of his tenure in the White House. Now, Mitt Romney is in a panic about his rapidly diminishing chances of ever getting there. It must be time to worry about Bin Laden again.

In a devastating New York Times op-ed today, 9/11 Commission leaders Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton accused the CIA of stonewalling their panel. The chairman and co-chairman alleged that those in the Bush administration who knew about videotapes of CIA detainee interrogations but failed to inform the 9/11 panel "obstructed our investigation." But lost in their historical record is one other inconvenient truth: President Bush tried to stonewall the 9/11 Commission from the very beginning.

In their op-ed, Keane and Hamilton mince no words about the Bush administration's refusal to either disclose the existence of the tapes or provide access to the detainees themselves:

The commission's mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes - and did not tell us about them - obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. - or the White House - of the commission's interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations...

...A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel, the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.

But while the 9/11 Commission was indeed a "a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country," it was also one initially opposed by President Bush.

As CBS reported on May 23, 2002, President Bush had no intention of following in the footsteps of FDR and LBJ by convening an independent commission to study the national disaster of 9/11 which transpired on his watch:

President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11.

Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees.

CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante reports that Mr. Bush said the investigation should be confined to Congress because it deals with sensitive information that could reveal sources and methods of intelligence. Therefore, he said, the congressional investigation is "the best place" to probe the events leading up to the terrorist attacks.

"I have great confidence in our FBI and CIA," the President said in Berlin, adding that he feels the agencies are already improving their information sharing practices.

But as with the later Iraq WMD investigation, President Bush flip-flopped and reversed course. Bush's political cowardice was only overcome by the overwhelming demands of public opinion. As ABC News detailed on September 20, 2002:

Reversing course, President Bush said today he now supports establishing an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Momentum for such a commission has grown in recent months.

(It is worth noting that his initial choice for panel head was Henry Kissinger, architect of the unconstitutional invasion of Cambodia in 1970. Ironically Kissinger just last month authored a stinging criticism of the CIA for its revised Iran National Intelligence Estimate.)

Bush's stonewalling of the 9/11 Commission extended far beyond trying to extinguish the panel at its birth. President Bush refused to testify under oath before the panel, with his testimony delivered jointly with Vice President Cheney. And under the ruse of "executive privilege" (or what press secretary Scott McClellan on March 9, 2004 called "a matter of principle, not a matter of preference") the President tried to prevent then-National Security Adviser Condi Rice from appearing before Keane and Hamilton. But Bush again reversed course, caving to public pressure just three weeks later over Rice's testimony in order to provide what Karen Hughes disingenuously referred to as "full cooperation."

(As an epilogue, historians - and comedians - will be forever thankful for Bush's ultimate decision to allow Rice to appear before the 9/11 Commission. Her response to panel members about the title of the infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) warning of potential attacks by Al Qaeda is now sadly the stuff of legend: "I believe the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'")

No doubt, there will be heated discussion over Keane and Hamilton's conclusion:

What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

That obstructionism from the Bush administration, of course, started on Day 1.

UPDATE: Attorney General Michael Mukasey today announced a criminal probe into the CIA tapes scandal.

The anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor gives us an opportunity to remember our tragic loss that day, and reflect on the almost unimaginable sacrifices that generation of Americans made to protect the liberty of all who followed. But as I first suggested in 2005, our observance now includes a new ritual. With each passing year President Bush dishonors the memory of Pearl Harbor, misappropriating its meaning and lessons to support his partisan political purposes and his war in Iraq.

Year after year on Pearl Harbor Day, President Bush presents the response to the attacks of 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq as a single, unified struggle against an existential terrorist threat. But that proclaimed threat to our national survival is belied by the actions of the White House. George W. Bush has not asked Americans for sacrifices in the war against Al Qaeda. He has not mobilized us to fight the war, refused to require privation at home to support it, and certainly refused to demand that we pay for it.

But you'd never know it from the words of President Bush each December 7. In his annual Pearl Harbor declaration on Tuesday, Bush subtly suggested that the American conflicts in Berlin and Baghdad, Tokyo and Tal Afar are cut from the same cloth:

"When it mattered most, an entire generation of Americans stepped forward to protect our freedom and to defend liberty. Their devotion to duty and willingness to serve a cause greater than self helped secure our future and our way of life...From the unprovoked attack at Pearl Harbor grew a steadfast resolve that has made America a defender of freedom around the world, and our mission continues as our men and women in uniform serve at home and in distant lands."

In 2006, though, Bush showed no such finesse in equating Imperial Japan with sectarian militias in Iraq:

"After the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, 'We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows.' In the 21st century, freedom is again under attack, and young Americans have stepped forward to serve in a global war on terror that will secure our liberty and determine the destiny of millions around the world. Like generations before, we will answer history's call with confidence, confront threats to our way of life, and build a more peaceful world for our children and grandchildren."

But it was in 2005, when President Bush used the 64th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to continue his faltering effort to drum up support for his Iraq policy, that his theft of the legacy of Pearl Harbor was most obvious - and cynical.

Only days after unveiling his supposed "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" to an incredulous American public, Bush sought once again to draw parallels with a different, "good war" against fascism:

The strike on Pearl Harbor was the start of a long war for America -- a massive struggle against those who attacked us, and those who shared their destructive ambitions. Fortunately for all of us, a great generation of Americans was more than equal to the challenge. Our nation pulled together -- and despite setbacks and battlefield defeats, we did not waver in freedom's cause. With courage and determination, we won a war on two fronts: we liberated millions, we aided the rise of democracy in Europe and Asia we watched enemies become allies, and we laid the foundation of peace for generations.

On September the 11th, 2001, our nation awoke to another sudden attack. In the space of just 102 minutes, more Americans were killed than we lost at Pearl Harbor. Like generations before us, we accepted new responsibilities, and we confronted new dangers with firm resolve. Like generations before us, we're taking the fight to those who attacked us -- and those who share their murderous vision for future attacks. Like generations before us, we've faced setbacks on the path to victory -- yet we will fight this war without wavering. And like the generations before us, we will prevail.

Sadly, the President's false analogies to World War II only serve to highlight his own shortcomings as a wartime leader. Bush is no FDR, to be sure. More shameful still is his call for national sacrifice, a concept utterly absent from the Bush presidency before September 11th and since.

For supporters of the Bush administration's crusade against civil liberties in its war on terror, today's rulings in the 2004 Madrid bombing case will no doubt provide more justification for detainee torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, military commissions and other clearly extra-constitutional measures. In Madrid today as in so many terrorism prosecution trials in the U.S., sometimes the suspects are not found guilty.

In Spain, the rule of law would appear to be alive and well. 21 of 28 suspects charged in connection with the March 11, 2004 train station bombings that killed 191 and wounded over 1,800 were convicted. The three lead suspects were found guilty of murder and attempted murder and were sentenced to up to 43,000 years in jail. (Spanish law bars the death penalty and apparently limits jail time to 40 years.) But the supposed mastermind, the Egyptian Rabei Osman, was acquitted despite the prosecution's wiretap evidence that he bragged about the idea for the 2004 terror attack.

The rulings in Madrid come hot on the heels of just the latest failed terrorism case for the Bush administration. Just last week, a mistrial was declared in Dallas in the prosecution against officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an Islamic charity accused of providing millions of dollars to Hamas, the Palestinian group recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. Importantly, as the Washington Post noted:

"The government did not argue that Holy Land directly supported terrorist groups. Instead, prosecutors asserted that the charity provided money to committees in the West Bank and Gaza that were controlled by Hamas and, in doing so, created goodwill toward the militant organization, helping it recruit members."

But despite wiretap evidence that one of the defendants proclaimed a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv a " beautiful operation," federal prosectors were unable to convince the jury that the charity's funding of Hamas schools and medical clinics constituted material support for terrorism. Juror William Neal said of the case, which the FBI began pursuing in 1993 and only chose to prosecute after 9/11, that it "was strung together with macaroni noodles." (In the wake of the mistrial, the government will likely retry the group's leaders.) David Zaring, a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School, concluded:

"The difficulty the government has had in getting convictions in these cases suggests to me that there is something wrong with the process and the targets of the closures."

The Justice Department's failure in the Holy Land case is far from an isolated example for the Bush administration. As the New York Times documented last week:

From 1993 to 2001, prosecutors in Manhattan convicted some three dozen terrorists through guilty pleas and in six major trials.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the government's track record has been decidedly spottier, and its failure to obtain a single conviction on Monday in its terrorism-financing prosecution of what was once the nation's largest Islamic charity was another in a series of missteps and setbacks.

In the Bush administration's defense, the nature of many terrorism cases has changed since 9/11. Prior to 9/11, most terror prosecutions centered on acts of violence, such as the first World Trade Center bombing or the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. In the post-September 11 environment, the Bush Justice Department has aggressively pursued cases focused on the less concrete charge of "material support" for terrorists. An article by Robert Chesney in the Lewis and Clark Law Review found that the government initiated 108 material support cases and completed 62, with 9 defendants convicted, 30 defendants pleading guilty, and 11 pleading guilty to other charges. As a result, according to another study by New York University Law School, "the government has a 29 percent conviction rate in terrorism prosecutions overall, compared with 92 percent for felonies generally."

Sometimes, the bad guys win. And for the Bush administration and its amen corner, that is clearly unacceptable.

All of which helps in part to explain the anti-terror legal regime followed by the White House. Judges and juries sometimes pose the inconvenient risk of acquittal. So suspected Al Qaeda members and allies are labeled "enemy combatants" and denied access to either the protections of the Geneva Convention or the America legal system. In the wake of the Supreme Court's Hamdan case, a new law ensured that Military Commissions can hear cases involving defendants barred access to attorneys and including evidence coerced using interrogations techniques amounting to torture. (The legal basis for those techniques, of course, rests on secret Justice Department memos and a 2005 presidential signing statement flouting a law passed by Congress.) And American citizens face the prospect electronic surveillance illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until its August revision by Congress.

The results are disturbing for defendants and the rule of law alike. Supposed "dirty bomber" and American citizen Jose Padilla was held in a Navy brig without legal counsel for three years, only to be tried and convicted on lesser charges in the wake of Hamdan based on testimony which may have been coerced from him. And just this morning,the New York Times reported on the trial of former Michigan prosecutor Richard G. Convertino, who along with a State Department security officer, is facing charges he "conspired to hide photographs that, if shared at the 2003 trial, might have undermined the case against four North African immigrants accused of being part of a terror sleeper cell."

The President's strategic assault on civil liberties and American law is supported by a linguistic campaign. As Glenn Greenwald documents in his devastating book, A Tragic Legacy, for President Bush and his allies there are no terrorism suspects, only terrorists. The effect for Republicans is to both play on Americans' fear of future of terrorist attacks while demonizing Democrats. For example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the Military Commissions Act for allowing accused terrorism suspects of being convicted on the basis of evidence they are prohibited from examining:

"I imagine it would be awkward for many of my Democratic colleagues to go home and explain a vote to provide sensitive, classified information to terrorists." [p. 252]

Greenwald also cited the statement of Florida Senator Mel Martinez:

Senator Mel Martinez said this about why he voted to deny habeas corpus to detainees in U.S. custody: "We must remember the detainees this law affects are terrorists." [p.253]

Those suspected of being terrorists may in fact be terrorists. Or, as juries have found in Madrid, Dallas and elsewhere in the United States, there's a chance they may not. But that's a chance the Bush administration increasingly is not going to take.

As Bush's past flip-flops suggest, Osama Bin Laden's importance is inversely proportional to the political fortunes of the President and his party. With General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker defending Bush's Iraq surge in Congress this week, Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and the specter of September 11 loom large for Republican message makers. In a July 25 address to U.S. troops at Charleston Air Force base, President Bush previewed the Bin Laden subtext, mentioning Al Qaeda 95 times in a speech on Iraq. Testifying before the Senate yesterday, Director National Intelligence Mike McConnell concurred, "They have regained a significant level of their capability," adding, "the threat is real." (Apparently, Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend didn't get the memo; in the wake of the latest Bin Laden video, she termed the Al Qaeda chieftain "virtually impotent.")

After President Bush himself, no one seeks to capitalize on Americans' fear of the next 9/11 more than Rudy Giuliani. The self-proclaimed "Mayor of 9/11" is running to be the President of 9/11. Despite the buffeting his reputation has received from Harper's, Rolling Stone and Time, Giuliani has made it clear that Osama Bin Laden serves as his invisible running mate. "For me," Rudy stated last Friday, "every day is an anniversary of September 11." Encapsulating the Republican politics of fear he shares with the man he hopes to replace in the Oval Office, Giuliani continued:

"If we don't talk about September 11, you can't prepare to try to avoid another September 11."

As I wrote on Sunday, President Bush may be burdened by his Iraq war strategy overwhelmingly rejected by the American people, but his inability to capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan may actually be his last trump card at home. Past Bin Laden videos, as the New Republic noted, served to reinforce the fear-mongering that is so central to the Bush/GOP message machine. Far from reminding Americans about Bush's failure to take out Bin Laden, the videos instead highlight our continued vulnerability to sudden and unexpected terrorist violence. As John Judis suggests, Bush's subliminal message plays on the fear of death.

Which should come as no surprise. Now increasingly powerless on this sixth anniversary of 9/11, George W. Bush has nothing to offer but fear itself.

The contrast with FDR, another wartime president who spoke of fear itself, could not be more stark. As I wrote on the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, FDR's World War II call for sacrifice has been replaced by ritualistic displays of grief and remembrance which reflect the new mass cultural experience of participatory mourning in the United States. And for a nation engaged in a global war with Al Qaeda, the American culture of grief is not only unseemly, it is extremely dangerous.

For more on "9/11 and the Culture of Grief," continue reading below.

In the wake of the newest video from Osama Bin Laden, Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend feebly attempted to discount the importance of the still at-large Al Qaeda leader. Trapped in his mountain redoubt, she said, Bin Laden is "virtually impotent." But with the man he wanted "dead or alive" securely ensconced in his Pakistani safe haven and directing a reconstituted Al Qaeda network, it is President Bush who is looking impotent indeed.

To be sure, the American intelligence community sees Bin Laden's network as anything but flaccid. In the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA concluded that Al Qaeda had "rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the 2001 terrorist attacks." Almost six years after the Twin Towers fell, the study suggested a failing report card for a Bush administration distracted by the war in Iraq and unable to pressure the Musharraf government over Al Qaeda's free reign in the northwest territories of Pakistan. As I noted in July:

Counterterrorism analysts produced the document, titled "Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West." The document pays special heed to the terror group's safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said.

Al-Qaida is "considerably operationally stronger than a year ago" and has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001," the official said, paraphrasing the report's conclusions. "They are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States."

The group also has created "the most robust training program since 2001, with an interest in using European operatives," the official quoted the report as saying.

At the same time, this official said, the report speaks of "significant gaps in intelligence" so U.S. authorities may be ignorant of potential or planned attacks.

While Bin Laden's resurgent Al Qaeda is once again a potent threat to the United States, an increasingly unpopular and isolated President Bush seems ever less capable of retaliating. Just days after the publication of the NIE, Bush acknowledged the failure of his "no safe havens" policy, a cornerstone of the now-deceased Bush Doctrine:

"One of the most troubling [points in the NIE] is its assessment that al Qaeda has managed to establish a safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Last September, President Musharraf of Pakistan reached an agreement that gave tribal leaders more responsibility for policing their own areas. Unfortunately, tribal leaders were unwilling and unable to go after al Qaeda or the Taliban."

What a difference six years makes. In his address to Congress on September 20, 2001, a determined President Bush declared his "no safe havens" principle even as the World Trade Center towers still smoldered in lower Manhattan:

"We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

Unable to capture or kill Bin Laden and afraid to risk the ire - and future - of the Musharraf government, it's no wonder that President Bush and his amen corner downplay OBL's significance. After all, Bush has flip-flopped on the importance of Bin Laden, alternately claiming to "take him seriously" or being "not that concerned about him," as his political circumstances require. In May, Mitt Romney echoed Bush's on-again, off-again nonchalance, declaring "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person." Even Fred Thompson, the latest entry into the 2008 GOP presidential sweepstakes, joined in the game by saying Bin Laden "is more symbolism than anything else."

President Bush may be burdened by his Iraq war strategy overwhelmingly rejected by the American people, but his inability to capture Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan may be his last trump card at home. Past Bin Laden videos, as the New Republic noted, served to reinforce the fear-mongering that is so central to the Bush/GOP message machine. Far from reminding Americans about Bush's failure to take out Bin Laden, the videos instead highlight our continued vulnerability to sudden and unexpected terrorist violence. As John Judis suggests, Bush's subliminal message plays on the fear of death.

Which should come as no surprise. Now increasingly powerless, George W. Bush has nothing to offer but fear itself.

UPDATE: Just one day after Townsend's trag-comic statement about Osama Bin Laden's impotence, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the Senate of Al Qaeda, "They have regained a significant level of their capability. The threat is real."

Three weeks ago, news of an aborted 2005 U.S. raid against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan confirmed the failure of a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine, "no safe havens for terrorists." Now, it would appear, President Bush himself agrees with that assessment.

In his Saturday radio address, President Bush tried to spin the new National Intelligence Estimate and its warnings regarding a dangerously resurgent Al Qaeda in Pakistan. But buried among cherry-picked quotes about successes against Bin Laden's organization and his comical claim of willingness to work with Congress to "modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" was a startling admission. President Bush acknowledged that his post 9/11 mantra of "no safe havens for terrorists" was a dismal failure:

"One of the most troubling [points in the NIE] is its assessment that al Qaeda has managed to establish a safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Last September, President Musharraf of Pakistan reached an agreement that gave tribal leaders more responsibility for policing their own areas. Unfortunately, tribal leaders were unwilling and unable to go after al Qaeda or the Taliban."

What a difference six years makes. In his address to Congress on September 20, 2001, a determined President Bush declared his "no safe havens" principle even as the World Trade Center towers still smoldered in lower Manhattan:

"We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

As it turns out, no so much. Bush's war on the cheap in Afghanistan allowed Osama Bin Laden and much of the Al Qaeda leadership to escape the American pincer around Tora Bora in the winter of 2001-2002. The massive diversion of U.S. resources to the invasion of Iraq and the eventual shuttering of the CIA's Bin Laden unit in 2005 showed that President Bush had taken his eyes off the prize.

And now, the frailty of Pervez Musharraf's government impedes action against Al Qaeda in Pakistan by either Islamabad or Washington. What Bush Saturday falsely portrayed as a truce by Musharraf to enable tribal leaders in lawless Northwest Pakistan to police their own territories was in fact a surrender to reality. His troops stymied, his life at risk and his regime under fire, Musharraf called off his campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. With that truce now in tatters in the wake of the Red Mosque uprising, Musharraf faces renewed violence.

And the United States faces a fateful choice. The Bush administration can leave Al Qaeda and the Taliban to Musharraf and face the prospect of an entrenched and growing international terrorist presence in Pakistan. Or, the U.S. can violate Pakistani sovereignty and strike Al Qaeda along the Afghan frontier, risking the destabilization of the Musharraf regime in Islamabad.

On Sunday, Bush homeland security adviser Frances Townsend illustrated the American dilemma while claiming U.S. military action within Pakistan remains a possibility:

"Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about. Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table.

We should also be clear that we believe Pakistan has been a very good ally in the war on terrorism. Musharraf has been the subject of numerous assassination attempts. Al-Qaida's trying to kill him. They get what the problem is. And we're working with them to deny al-Qaida and the Taliban the safe haven."

For now, though, Al Qaeda's safe haven seems very safe indeed. That, combined with the fiasco of his preventive war in Iraq and his dismal record of democracy promotion in the Middle East, means the President's Bush Doctrine is dead and buried.

Just don't expect George W. Bush to admit that anytime soon.

Life imitates art, or so it would seem when it comes to religious intolerance in the North American heartland. In January, the Canadian Broadcasting Company began airing Little Mosque on the Prairie, an upbeat comedy about a small Muslim community making its way in a rural Saskatchewan town. But in Harris County, Texas, the culture clash is no joke, as outraged residents hope to block the Katy Islamic Association from building its house of worship.

"It's just a comedy that happens to have Muslim people in it, and it's meant to make people laugh," said Nawaz, adding "It's about relationships and human interactions and life in a rural setting." Actor Boyd Banks, who portrays a resident ever vigilant towards his new Muslim neighbors, acknowledged the significance of the show:

"It's been a fun role to play, because let's face it, after September 11, we all had racist thoughts. I know I had them, and I'm not proud of that. It would be nice, wouldn't it, if this show could end some of the prejudices that people have about Muslims."

Sadly, that kind of idealism has been mugged by reality in the area around Katy, Texas. As the Daily Show with Jon Stewart highlighted last week, the people have rallied to halt the local Katy Islamic Association from constructing a mosque and community center on land just outside of town. Spearheading the effort is rancher Craig Baker, whose sprawling property essentially surrounds the KIA lot.

Baker, who assured the Daily Show's Rob Riggle that his opposition to the mosque plan has "nothing to do with the Muslim thing," has welcomed his new neighbors with pig races on Fridays, the holy day of the Muslim week. (Muslims, of course, do not eat pork and consider the animals unclean.) Amazingly, Baker told Riggle it would be wrong for his neighbors to call him a racist. "Holler out something like 'you're a bigot,'" he insisted, "that would be correct."

This is not the first mobilization of the Katy Christian faithful against threats real or imagined. In 2006, a group of parents sued the Katy Independent School District for discrimination against Christians supposedly including such outrages as placing a menorah closer than a Christmas tree to a school door during the winter holidays. But it is KIA mosque proposal which has taken of the trappings of a national crusade, including fake web sites for the Islamic association (here and here). Conservative online watering holes like Free Republic have been predictably supportive.

Mercifully, not all of the good people in Harris County see the mosque controversy in black and white. The Houston Chronicle's Helen Eriksen asked readers if media coverage of the mosque controversy hurts the area's image. KIA's president, Kamel Fotouh, reported that one Friday a man came to the mosque to apologize for his neighbors. "He moved me, really," Fotouh said. "The sense of fairness, the sense of standing by the underdog."

Meanwhile, over 2 million Canadians tuned in for the inaugural episode of the new comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie. But down in Katy, Texas, no one is laughing.

I have long argued that for conservative Republicans, the only impeachable offense George W. Bush could ever commit would involve video evidence of him and Dick Cheney engaged in the throes of neo-con love-making. Now, just two days after his major address on the deteriorating situation against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, there are new revelations of a different Bush homo-erotic fantasy, this time with Osama Bin Laden.

In a review of a new biography of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli paper Ha'aretz included this purported exchange between President Bush and the now-comatose Sharon:

Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"

Given this shocking revelations from that paragon of family values, psychologists can only ponder the workings of the Bush mind. President Bush's past utterances about Bin Laden, could suggest Dubya's frustration with the elusiveness of the Al Qaeda leader, still at large over five years after the 9/11 attacks. Or Bush's "he loves me, he loves me not" statements could just be the product of unrequited love:

"All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it. I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously." (January 25, 2006)

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." (March 13, 2002)

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden." (October 13, 2004)

"There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" (September 17, 2001)

While Vice President Cheney is quite comfortable with instructing elected American representatives to f**k themselves on the floor of the United States Senate, President Bush may well be waging an internal battle with Ted Haggard-like demons of his own.

For more armchair psychoanalysis of George W. Bush, see "Bush on the Couch."

Tuesday's State of the Union Address should offer Americans compelling viewing. After the GOP's electoral disaster in November and the resounding thud that greeted the "surge" in Iraq, the 2007 SOTU can be said to officially mark the last throes of the Bush presidency.

In anticipation of tomorrow night's presidential flight of fantasy, here are 10 things to look for in the 2007 State of the Union:

1. An Unhealthy Vision
As his Saturday radio address made clear, President Bush will lead with health care in his domestic agenda. But as Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania and other states explore potential new approaches to universal coverage, President Bush will recycle his earlier dead-on-arrival prescriptions such as association health plans and medical savings accounts. His call for tax breaks for health insurance purchases combined with new taxes on employee health care benefits is especially disturbing, based as it on the mistaken assumption that Americans over-utilize their existing medical coverage. The 46 million uninsured will enjoy a belly laugh at that misguided applause line.

2. Surge Protector
The President will no doubt make a full-throated defense of his planned troop surge in Iraq. Using rhetoric falling just short of his campaign 2006 equation of Democrats and terrorists, Bush will speak of a new way forward, of fighting them there and not here, about a vital front in the war on terror, his strategy is victory, and liberty as God's gift to humanity. Mindful of 2002's abortive "Axis of Evil," Bush instead will merely refer to Iran and Syria as "a coupla points of evil."

3. Faux Iraq-9/11 Link Redux
A central tactic in Bush's defense of his calamitous Iraq policy will be the mindless repetition of not-subtle rhetorical linkages between Iraq and the attacks of September 11. While President Bush long ago acknowledged that Saddam's Iraq had no role in assisting Al Qaeda in the 9/11 plot ("No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th"), he will speak of Iraq and Afghanistan interchangeably while discussing the "people who attacked us." At this point in failed presidency, after all, George W. Bush has nothing to offer but fear itself.

4. Sacrificial Sham
In one of his more nakedly cynical rhetorical devices, President Bush will speak of the sacrifices Americans must make to win the war in Iraq and compare this generation to those who fought and conquered fascism in World War II. Bush will, of course, overlook the tax increases (91% top marginal rate!), the casualties, the 15 million man military army and rationing the Greatest Generation endured. Bush's notion of sacrifice in the post-9/11 world: go shopping.

5. Culture of Life Redux
No Bush address would be complete without the requisite laundry list of the American Taliban's supposed "culture of life." Coming just three days after the President proclaimed National Sanctity of Life Day, look for Bush to go on a jihad about stem cell research, fetal pain and perhaps even the mythical "post-abortion syndrome."

6. Energy Shortage
Energy independence will once again be a Bush talking point. Look for the President to go on the war path against the House and its vote to repeal tax breaks for energy companies that don't need them.

7. Warming to Global Warming
The Guardian and other sources report that President Bush in a tectonic shift may speak of global warming and the need to address global climate change. After all, many of the President's evangelical allies, most of whom believe the world is only 6000 years old, are apparently now concerned about fire and brimstone not in hell but on the earth's surface. I'll believe Bush's turnabout on global warming when I see it. After all, he answers to a higher authority - Karl Rove.

8. The Spend and Not Tax Conservative
President Bush will claim credit for a robust economy, which he will attribute to his tax cuts and the salutary effects of redistributing billions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans. As for taking accountability for the massive growth in the federal budget and deficit since assuming office in 2001, not so much.

9. The New Bipartisanship: The Democratic Deficit
Crowing about a false halving of the federal budget deficit (the Bush White House cooked the pre-election books in 2004 to show a comically - and mythically - large budget gap), the President will pretend to draw a hard line on federal spending. The line item veto, Bush will demand, is essential to prevent tax and spend Democrats from busting the budget.

10. Laura Bush: Gang Banger
As I wrote last year, another staple of the Dubya State of the Union is the assignment of one or more ill-defined family-focused initiatives to his wife Laura. In 2006, Laura was made the point person for the "Helping America's Youth Initiative," which encourages "caring adults to get involved in the life of a child." The year before, the First Lady's task was to broker a peace deal between the Bloods and the Cripps (which as Ann Coulter subsequently taught us, is the model for understanding Baghdad). That, apparently, is still on Laura's to-do list.

President Bush's past State of the Union speeches are available in the Perrspectives Document Library here.

The fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and primary politics have helped to once again bring out the worst from the mouths of the right. Featuring fear-mongering, the politics of the pulpit and outright racism, here are the latest mantras from the leading lights of the Republican Party.

"I wonder if [Democrats] they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), September 12, 2006.

"I know Iraq is a mess and we have screwed up seven ways from Sunday."
Senator Lindsey Graham, (R-SC), September 10, 2006.

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
President Bush, September 6, 2006.

"They [Cuban and Puerto Rican women] are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, (R-CA), March 3, 2006.

"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'"
Secretary of State Condi Rice, September 4, 2006.

"I'm not going to have a philosophical debate over politics."
President Bush to Maine war widow, August 25, 2006.

"God is the one who chooses our rulers."
Florida Congresswoman and Senate candidat