Perhaps Bush really believes Al Qaeda is to blame; perhaps he doesn't. He has to blame somebody for the mess, and who else can it be? Certainly not himself, or his minions. He can't cry a pox upon the houses of the very Shia and Sunnis he wants to unite. And while he sometimes calls Iran and Syria part of the problem, he doesn't want to lean too heavily on that, since we may wind up in negotiations with them, whether he and Cheney like it or not.

Compared to all of the above, Al Qaeda is shadowy and largely friendless -- a perfect scapegoat.

I add: by your logic the ever-amusing former Iraqi Information Minister, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, was delusional about conditions on the ground when he got on TV every night and said that the Iraqi army was completely slaughtering the American invaders.

The question Ivo raises is THE central question of the entire Bush presidency: where precisely does the incompetence and ignorance end and the lies and misinformation begin?

Perhaps, as Dan K suggests, there's a plan behind the flow of information coming out of the White House about Iraq right now, but I confess, listening to the news this morning and last night, I was struck mostly by the utter incoherence of the simultaneous messages (both the public intentional ones and the possibly unintentional leak of Hadley's responses to his visit to Baghdad).

On one side, the public explanation of Bush's visit to Jordan is to "ask Maliki some tough questions," and to put the Prime Minister on the spot about HE is going to "solve" the crisis. That Maliki is perched between Shi'ite intransigents and American puppetdom doesn't come into this view, of course: it's purely for rhetorical show for die-hard Bush supporters, as far as I can tell. "I'll look him in the eye and tell it like it is, man to man, and let him know it's up to him to act in a manly way!"

Bush also emphasized in Latvia the talking point he was given that "Iraq is a sovereign country", so he accepts the current conversations Maliki and others are having with Tehran and Damascus...though the Administration also keeps right on reproducing the older 'axis of evil'/nuclear threat rhetoric about Iran, and the 'supporter of terrorism/destroyer of Lebanon' rhetoric about Syria. (Whether these rhetorics are correct or prudent is not the point here: that requires serious and informed discussion. But what puzzles me is the self-contradictory rhetoric of saying these states must utterly transform themselves immediately, while simultaneously vaguely hoping they can fix Iraq for the US).

Yet, simultaneously, the White House knows full well that Maliki is either unable or unwilling to actually end the current chaos -- probably both unable and unwilling -- accompanied by vague speculations about his motivations and resources and how he might be encouraged to buck up. The obvious contradiction between "we need to fix Iraq" and "Maliki needs to fix Iraq" is only barely beneath the surface, as is the equally obvious fact that there's no sane reason to think that Maliki's solution would be to Bush's liking.

The third thread is about "building up" the Iraqi police and armed forces. Even as we hear about the daily slaughter of recruits to these putative stabilizing forces, we get earnest sounding message from the WH about how "now is the time to really put resources into the security forces." Now? Are they serious? The utter shoddiness and corruption of this so-called effort has been obvious for a long time. Moreover, anyone with a memory of such "security forces training" in other divided situations, (remember Nicaragua and Honduras?) can hardly be sanguine that handing heavy weapons and tactical training to what may become death squads is not a terribly good idea. It's way way too late...(though we should also not forget that there are probably many moderate, sensible Iraqis who would still welcome a genuinely stabilizing security force -- and that some of them have been risking their lives to help create it. The problem, though, is that even a small proportion of death squadders in police uniforms is enough to destroy the whole potential).

Finally, we have various murmurings about the Iraq Study Group, sometimes sounding like they will endorse W's crazy ideas, sometimes sounding like they are hoping for a pony, but rarely sounding as if they actually know much that isn't clear to any modestly diligent observer.

It's truly depressing and astounding how deep the mire is that W and his co-conspirators have gotten not just the United States, but the entire region and the entire world into. To be sure, Iraq was a hellish place before the US invasion, but the invasion itself, compounded by the utter mismanagement since, has only made the hellishness worse (if worse in a different way) while at the same time grossly destabilizing the larger region much more than it was before, and forcefully encouraging exactly the forces that are least in the US and world interest to encourage.

"So the fact that Bush still has no inkling about what is happening there..."

That doesn't sound like a question to me.

Your point about the emperor's wardrobe is well taken, but it is equally possible that, just like the former Iraqi Information Minister I referred to, Bush knows fully well how bad the situation is, but keeps up an optimistic pose in public for all of the usual machiavellian reasons.

The old saw of "baffle with brilliance or baffle with bullshit" comes to mind. I'm not seeing any volunteers to find a precise where and I'm not sure it even matters. Incompetence and ignorance breeds lies and misinformation to cover up said poor performance, we see it every day from other lazy and entitled fuc*s.

I disagree that it is either/or --

My vote goes to: Stupid Liar.

On second thought: Narcissist Lying Stupidly

No, this is it: A Stupid Lying Narcissist

Know what? It really doesn't matter what his diagnosis is. The results are the same anyway.

Jan Knaus

Wait-

Unearthed? At the NYTimes????

You mean they had to look under the fax machine???

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada

The old saw of "baffle with brilliance or baffle with bullshit" comes to mind.

Um, not quite....the old saw is ..if you can't dazzle them with brillance baffle them with bullshit.