So I guess that little 'president can't force Hastert's hand' charade didn't work out, did it? The Speaker has now agreed to allow an extension of two months for the 9/11 Commission to complete

A few of my Republican friends on the Hill claim that there's more to it than I think, that perhaps there's some reason Hastert has, separate from the White House, to oppose the extension.

I don't buy that for two reasons.

First, I think it's pretty close to objectively true that the White House has more political vulnerability on this than Republican members of the House. So I really don't see why Hastert would hold on even after the White House relented or what his other reason for holding on would be. (I'd like to now dispute his nominal reason for opposing an extension. But he's candid enough to admit that this is his reason -- politics. They didn't even take the time to think up a fig leaf rationale.) Using Ockham's Razor, you get pretty quickly to the conclusion that Hastert was doing this to help the White House, acting either on explicit instructions or a tacit understanding.

Second, even if we posit some unknown and close to inexplicable reason why Hastert would have been holding out on this, I just don't think anyone believes that Hastert (a fairly pliable Speaker, by historical standards) would buck an explicit demand or request from a president of his own party on such a charged and politically consequential issue.

As much as you try to nuance it, tease it apart, chew on it, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt, the whole episode comes up the same way: it was a charade.

See this morning's gaggle to see the discussion with Scott McClellan.

Now let's get to why the president can only spend one hour with the two co-chairs of the commission.

In this morning's back-and-forth, Scott McClellan advanced the argument that there is a separation of powers issue at stake here, since the commission was created by Congress.

That's sounds questionable to me on several counts.

But even if you grant that argument, can there really be a separation of powers issue at stake in restricting the questioning to one hour rather than, say, five or six hours? Similarly, is there a separation of powers issue in play in allowing only the chairs to be present rather than all the members of the commission? That sounds like an awfully hard argument to make.

Get ready to gag on the gaggle. This from this morning ...

QUESTION: Scott, is there any movement on working out an arrangement with the 9/11 Commission for the President to be questioned? And is it accurate that he wants to restrict questioning to just a single hour?

McCLELLAN: Well, I think the way I would describe it is that, one, -- a couple of things. One, the President looks forward to meeting with the chairman and vice chairman and providing the commission with the necessary information for it to complete its work. We have great confidence that the chairman and vice chairman can share that information with the entire commission.

I would point out to you that it is extraordinary for a sitting president and vice president to appear before a legislative body such as the 9/11 Commission. The President has agreed to do so because of his support for the important work that the commission is doing. And so he has agreed to a private meeting with the commission. They are looking at an hour, as you pointed out.

And I would point out that Chairman Keane, earlier this morning, went on to talk about the unprecedented cooperation of this administration to the work of the 9/11 Commission. And Chairman Keane said, and this is from an interview on CNN earlier this morning, "We have gotten a lot of cooperation from the President. This is one of the first Presidents to agree to an interview." And he went on to point out, even during the Kennedy administration, Lyndon Johnson wouldn't give them an interview. And then he said -- he went on to talk about the cooperation from day one, "when they helped us get our clearances expedited. They have been helpful. We have now seen the most secret documents in the possession of the United States government. There hasn't been a" -- he went on to say, "There hasn't been a single" -- oh wait -- "we have been able to take notes and they will inform our report. There hasn't been a single thing we have asked for that some members of the staff hasn't seen, not a single person who has refused to be interviewed."

So he went on to talk about the kind of unprecedented cooperation that this administration has provided because the President believes in the important work that this commission is doing.

QUESTION: What's your response to those who suspect that Speaker Hastert is secretly --

QUESTION: Why did they --

McCLELLAN: Helen, I just pointed out the chairman of the commission and his comments. Why isn't that being reported?

QUESTION: But there are other members --

McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Mark. Mark was finishing up.

QUESTION: What's your response to those who say Speaker Hastert is secretly doing the White House bidding in refusing to bring up a two-month extension for the commission?

McCLELLAN: Silly, silly idea. I mean, the President supports extension -- supports the extension that the commission has requested. We've made that view known publicly and privately.

QUESTION: Can I follow on that --

QUESTION: Can you answer Mark's question. Can you answer what Mark asked about the one-hour limit --

McCLELLAN: I said, no. I said -- I confirmed that.

QUESTION: And can I just clarify that ...

McCLELLAN: You were thinking about service, I know, when I mentioned that.

QUESTION: What the commission is asking for in that one hour is the entire commission, not just the chair and vice chair. Are you not agreeing to that --

McCLELLAN: The request came from the chairman and vice chairman, and the President looks forward to meeting privately with --

QUESTION: I know. But they followed up by saying that they want --

McCLELLAN: -- looks forward to meeting privately with the chairman and vice chairman to provide them with the necessary information.

QUESTION: Why not all of them? What's the problem?

McCLELLAN: Helen, we have great confidence that the chairman and vice chairman can share all that information with the rest of the commission.

QUESTION: Why do they have to share it? The others have ears.

McCLELLAN: They're going to have a public report. I talked about how this is extraordinary for a President to sit down with a legislative body such as the 9/11 Commission.

QUESTION: What's the President's problem, really, with meeting all of them?

QUESTION: It's a legislative body? I'm sorry.

McCLELLAN: There are lots of ways -- one, I have always said that there are lots of ways -- it's legislatively created, that's what I'm referring to. There are lots of ways to provide the commission with the information they need to do their work. And we have worked -- we have bent over backwards to provide unprecedented cooperation to the commission.

QUESTION: Not from what we hear.

McCLELLAN: And all you have to do is look back at what the commission chairman said earlier this morning.

QUESTION: Scott, may I follow on that?

McCLELLAN: You may.

QUESTION: First, where the idea of a precedent is concerned, President -- sitting President Gerald Ford went up to Capitol Hill and actually testified before the House Judiciary Committee, so there is a greater precedent than what you're referring to.

My question is, in every speech he gives, President Bush invokes --

McCLELLAN: Keep in mind there are separation of powers issues involved when you're talking about a legislatively created body.

QUESTION: I'm sure President Ford was aware of those. In every speech he gives, President Bush invokes the atrocities of 9/11 and he talks about how that event has impressed on him a determination to always honor the victims of those atrocities in his daily conduct of his office. And I wonder if you could explain with some serious Texan straight talk here, Scott, how it is honoring the victims of 9/11 to restrict the questioning of the President on this subject to one hour?

McCLELLAN: I hope you'll talk about the unprecedented cooperation that we're providing to the commission when you report this, James. Because if you look back at what we've done, it is unprecedented. We have provided more than 2 million pages of documents. We provided more than 60 compact discs of radar, flight and other information; more than 800 audio cassette tapes of interviews and other materials; more than 100 briefings, including at the head-of-agency level; more than 560 interviews. So this administration is cooperating closely and in an unprecedented way with the 9/11 Commission, because their work is very important.

QUESTION: That would have been a very pertinent answer had I asked you about the administration. But, in fact, I asked you about the President’s cooperation.

McCLELLAN: And the President is pleased to sit down with the chairman and vice chairman to provide them with the information they need to do their job. And we believe …

QUESTION: Why only one hour? Why only one hour?

McCLELLAN: -- we believe that he can provide them the necessary information in this private meeting.

QUESTION: In 60 minutes, that’s all it will take?

McCLELLAN: Well, the 9/11 Commission -- look back to what the chairman said earlier this morning. He talked about cooperation and the extraordinary commitment of the President to sit down with the commission.

QUESTION: Can you define legislative body? Why is this --

McCLELLAN: Legislatively created. Congress created the 9/11 Commission.

QUESTION: Scott, did the President ask Hastert, during his meetings this week, to extend the deadline?

McCLELLAN: I’m sorry? We’ve made our views known to Speaker Hastert, yes.

QUESTION: The President, personally, asked him?

McCLELLAN: And they did discuss it, as well. And Chief of Staff Card also spoke to him about our support for an extension.

QUESTION: What’s the response that you’ve been getting?

McCLELLAN: Well, we continue to urge Congress to extend it for two months.

QUESTION: So you’ve got a nowhere so far?

McCLELLAN: Well, you’ve heard Speaker Hastert's comments. You’ve heard other leaders comment on it, as well. And we continue to urge Congress to grant an extension.

QUESTION: The President -- we know Andy Card called Hastert, but the President, himself, as well?

McCLELLAN: They spoke about it earlier this week, as well. The Speaker was here a couple of times this week.

So, run on the 9/11 attacks; stonewall the 9/11 commission.

Is that the real Bush Doctrine?

Busted! This morning NPR did a follow-up fact-check on that interview Juan Williams did with Bush campaign chairman

As we noted on Monday, not only is there no evidence this is true, but President Bush said it wasn't true only two weeks earlier. The reporter walked through the evidence about the check box and rest of it, and also noted his instructor's claim (seconded by some of Bush's fellow pilots from the time) that Bush once asked about a program that sent Guard pilots on short tours overseas.

The reporter didn't go into all the contradictions in the story about the president's asking about the program in question. But all told, it's a good run-down of the facts and NPR deserves credit for not letting Racicot's false statement stand.

This is gratifying.

According to this post on the Democratic Underground website, there are already at least 34 senators on record opposing a

And if that's true, then it's game, set, match, since the amendment would require supermajorities in both houses of Congress unless the president wants to have the states call for a constitutional convention on banning gay marriage.

Now, I haven't fact-checked each name on the list. But I did a quick spot-check of a few names that I was surprised (and gratified) to see on the list, and they all checked out.

What most caught my eye is that, according to the list, there are eight Republicans who have already come out against: Alexander, Chafee, Collins, Hagel, Lugar, McCain, and Snowe. John Breaux (D-LA) -- one name that I confirmed -- is down as opposing as well.

Late Update: My own research seems to show that at least one of the Republicans noted, McCain, has left some room for possibly supporting an amendment, but appears to be signalling opposition.

Here's what the Arizona Republic said today about McCain's stance ...

"Marriage should be limited to a man and a woman," Sen. John McCain said after President Bush's announcement Tuesday that he backs such an amendment.

But McCain, a Republican, said, "My preference is for the states to resolve the issue," and "I will reserve judgment on a constitutional amendment until I am able to carefully review the language."

Sounds like he's against. But we'll see.

On the other hand, even Senator George Allen (R-VA), who's generally considered to be allied with the religious right, seems to be expressing some skepticism. "I am going to listen to all the analyses of why the statute we have on the books will not hold up," he tells the Times in Thursday's paper.

Let's follow up on Gary Bauer's argument -- noted below -- that gay marriage shouldn't be allowed because "homosexual behavior is fraught with adverse health affects."

Now,

Given the fact (controversial, but generally considered to be true) that lesbians have a lower incidence of sexually trasmitted diseases than either gay men or heterosexuals, by this logic, Bauer should be pushing to ban straight marriages too and only allow lesbian marriages. Perhaps he already is. He certainly wouldn't be the first straight-laced middle-aged man to have a thing for lesbians.

However that may be, this little reductio ad absurdum leads to the big absurdum at the center of Bauer's silly argument: namely, that if you're really serious about reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men -- rather than just bashing them -- presumeably you'd want to encourage monogamy, and thus marriage, rather than fight against it.

In fact, when you try to wrestle Bauer's foolishness and sexual authoritarianism down to some measure of reality, you realize that what he should really be calling for is something like mandatory gay marriage, ambivalence about straight marriage and more or less letting the lesbians just run wild.

Bauer should really stick to tried-and-true homophobia rather than trying to dress this one up with science, since it's clear he trips himself up pretty quickly.

And one more thing. This study in the International Journal of Epidemiology seems to the 'Oxford study' Bauer is referring to. And here's a follow-up from the authors of the study lambasting homophobes for using the results of their data as a weapon to bash gays.

Too many scandals? The ship's taken on too much water? Perle out at the Defense Policy Board. From the waves, indeed.

So many arguments pro- and con- on the gay marriage debate. Now Gary Bauer comes forward with a helpful Q&A; on the issue in which he notes, inter alia, the

Good to know we're going to have a high-minded debate on this.

Can we see that Oxford University study?

Oh Andy, you're breaking my heart.

This from Reuters ...

In a blow to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has told the White House and fellow Republicans that he will not bring up legislation to extend its May 27 deadline, officials said on Wednesday.

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, personally had appealed to Speaker Dennis Hastert to reconsider, and the Illinois Republican met on Wednesday with Bush at the White House.

But the speaker's spokesman, John Feehery, said Hastert told the White House and members of the House Republican conference that "it's a bad idea to extend the commission and ... that we're not going to bring any legislation up."

The commission wants a 60-day extension through July 26 to complete its final report on the attacks. Despite initial objections, Bush backed the extension and the Senate is moving forward with legislation

Now, I know the president's

But I must say I'm genuinely surprised that the White House believes that anyone is stupid enough to believe that their fortunes have dipped so low that the House leadership tells them to go jump in a lake when they say they want something done.

(There seems to be bipartisan support for an extension in the Senate; but the more manageable House is where the White House usually goes to get this stuff done.)

Wouldn't you have just loved to have been a fly on the wall at that brutal moment when long-time Bush family retainer and current White House Chief of Staff Andy Card begged Speaker Hastert to let the commission keep investigating the administration, and Hastert replied, "Buddy, your word just doesn't carry the weight it used to in this town," and then walked out the door?

I really think the folks at the White House must be out of touch with how quickly their credibility with the public and the media is falling if they think that anyone will buy this stuff.

A few days ago the president sends out his campaign manager to peddle a wholly unsubstantiated claim that the president tried to go to Vietnam, when the president himself said this wasn't true not two weeks before.

Now, after the president had said he would get behind extending the deadline for the 9/11 commission's report, they whip up this dingbat kabuki with Hastert to get them off the hook.

It's like they're losing touch.

Okay, this is just for laughs, I guess. But how bad does the White House want the NASCAR dad vote?

The White House website has a section called 'Ask the White House.' It's basically a section where various administration officials do online Q&As; about administration policy -- press secretaries, policy makers, appointees, etc.

Go look at the site right now and look who the most recent person to do a Q&A; is.

P.S. Special thanks to TPM reader RG for the catch.

Late Update on the fate of H-Res 499 (noted earlier this afternoon), the Plame investigation resolution in the House. The House International Relations Committee has just voted it down on a party line vote, 24-22.

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said it would be "redundant and irresponsible to pass the resolution and for Congress to initiate its own fact-finding, when there is an on-going criminal investigation under way led by a very reputable U.S. Attorney ... God forbid that this U.S. Attorney should investigate any of us."

Create the deficit with upper-income tax cuts; shrink the deficit with Social Security benefit cuts.

That sort of typifies the Bush-era Republican shell game on fiscal policy. And it's what Alan Greenspan said today on the Hill.

But Greenspan did the White House no favors with this one. McClellan will get asked about this tomorrow and it'll be hanging around their necks for some time.

Lest anyone forget, today is the deadline for the House Republican caucus to sign off on continued efforts to cover up what happened to Valerie Plame.

On January 21st, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced

Basically, this legislative tactic forced the House majority to go on record as to whether they were willing to allow any investigation of the Plame matter. It gave the Intelligence, Judiciary, Armed Services and International Relations Committees fourteen legislative days to decide whether to authorize the request for records from the three executive branch departments or refuse to do so.

Pretty quickly, the Intelligence Committee convened and voted 'no'. Presumably it was a party line vote but we actually don't know since the majority insisted that the vote and the debate over that vote be held in secret session.

Then this morning the Judiciary Committee met and voted it down on a straight party-line vote. And this afternoon or this evening Armed Services and International Relations are scheduled to vote too, and presumably they'll do the same.

The proffered excuse from the Republicans has been that they don't want to interfere with the on-going criminal investigation -- though that excuse is somewhat belied by the fact that countless congressional investigations have been carried out simultaneous with criminal probes.

Word is that the Republican members are under orders from their leadership and the White House to vote 'no'. Earlier this month, Holt told The Hill that Republican members of the relevant committees had told him that he is "doing the right thing." But, he said, they dare not say so publicly.

Over on his website, Atrios speculates as to why Tom DeLay delivered such a measured

I think he's got it basically right.

Now, obviously, DeLay's relative caution in embracing the president's position (so to speak) doesn't stem from any new-found concern for gay rights. And I'm sure we'll hear him soon enough saying rancid things about how gay marriages will end western civilization, and so forth.

But I have real questions about how many Republican members of congress were excited to hear this from the president. I have no doubt that many members of congress from the South and other conservative parts of the country will happily vote in favor of it. And I have no doubt that many others will vote in favor of it, happily or not.

But I bet you there aren't that many senators and representatives outside of the South and perhaps the Mountain West who are looking forward to this coming to a vote at all.

Think about it this way.

If you're an incumbent, you're more than likely to be cruising towards a victory in November. Why do you need the headache? In most parts of the country any vote on this -- yea or nea -- will instantly make you a lot of enemies. Gordon Smith, Republican Senator from Oregon -- does he want to vote on this? Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, the two Senators from Maine? How about Pete Domenici, Mike DeWine, George Voinovich, Arlen Specter or Kit Bond?

Now, again, my point isn't that all these folks or even any of these folks will vote against this, if and when it comes to a vote. My point is simply that I think the great majority of them would greatly prefer the whole issue never come to them for a vote. And the same applies to many, many Republican reps in the House.

The truth is that this is all for the president. Most politicians see this as a highly-charged, divisive issue best left to states and localities to hash out amongst themselves until some sort of rough consensus emerges either nationally or from region to region. That doesn't mean it's a position based on principle or scruple. They just don't want it in their hands. It's a hot potato.

Nor am I saying that gay marriage is popular. Far from it. I have no doubt that a substantial majority of the population is against allowing marriage rights for gays. But opposing gay marriage isn't the same as wanting to tear the country apart by trying to put this into the constitution -- where I think even many opponents of gay marriage don't think it belongs.

That is why I'm not sure this will even end up being good politics for the president. On the straight issue of gay marriage, yea or nea, I think there's little doubt a sizeable majority opposes this. But there is rising cynicism about the president's motives -- or rather, rising cynicism about the president's cynicism. And I think it's possible that more than a few voters who are uneasy about gay marriage or downright opposed to it won't appreciate the president's willingness to trash the country and the constitution just because his domestic and international policies are in a shambles.

It all reminds me of a line from a famous, or rather infamous, memo Pat Buchanan, then a White House staffer, wrote for Richard Nixon in, I believe, 1972 when their idea of the moment was what they called 'positive polarization'.

At the end of this confidential strategy memo laying out various ideas about how to create social unrest over racial issues and confrontations with the judiciary, Buchanan wrote (and you can find this passage on p. 185 of Jonathan Schell's wonderful Time of Illusion): "In conclusion, this is a potential throw of the dice that could bring the media on our heads, and cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

And there you have it. Tear the country apart. And once it's broken, our chunk will be bigger.

Only this time I'm not sure it will.

I'm just not sure swing voters will fall for the president's opportunism.

What does President Bush's announcement today tell you about whether he thinks he can win reelection based on the record he's compiled over the last three years?

Look at the picture which leads this column in Newsweek on gay marriage. I think it helps explain what this issue is about.

What does it tell you when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) isn't sure he wants to be as reckless, extreme and divisive on gay rights as President Bush? This from a late story on the Associated Press newswire ...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he appreciated Bush's "moral leadership" on the issue, but expressed caution about moving too quickly toward a constitutional solution, and never directly supported one. "This is so important we're not going to take a knee-jerk reaction to this," Delay said. "We are going to look at our options and we are going to be deliberative about what solutions we may suggest."

As I said earlier, like a cornered, wounded animal. What won't they do on the way down?

I don't think I really have anything to add to what Andrew Sullivan said with great eloquence and fury this morning about the president's

(Scott McClellan seems to have fudged a bit on the civil unions issue. But my understanding is that the specific amendment the president is backing clearly rules out civil unions too.)

I'm a pretty big small-'c' conservative on all matters of amending the constitution. In almost all cases it should be reserved for structural revisions to the architecture of the state, not as a means to hardwire policy changes or litter it with silliness about congressional pay raises. But it really is a sad day when we consider using the amendment process to turn back the widening gyre of equality and emancipation which has always been this document's role in the American state.

(The White House will try to say that this is in response to what is happening in San Francisco. But I don't think that will pass close scrutiny since, if recollection serves, they started signalling this before that happened.)

We should also note a few things about what this means about the president.

The White House didn't want to have the president out last night making a slashing campaign speech in late February. They also didn't want to start hitting the airwaves this early with their campaign commercials. And they definitely did not want the president jumping off the high dive into a gay rights culture war.

The strategy was to bank the president's rock solid support from Republicans and spend the year above the political fray with soft sounding proposals aimed at the political middle.

But it hasn't worked out that way.

The support among conservatives has taken some real hits. The White House has decided that the long-predicted rising economy won't float them through this election. The situation in Iraq looks wobbly and likely to get worse before it gets better. So deprived of the ability to run on his record he's decided to save his political hide by trying to tear the country apart over a charged and divisive social issue which is being hashed out through the political process in the states.

It's his dad and the flag burning amendment all over again. Is there really anything that tells you more about a man's character than this?

A couple weeks ago I said we should be on the look out for stuff like this -- not just the move on gay marriage, but the whole descent into scurrilous attacks and divisive wedge politics as the president's popularity drifts downward. (Isn't the White House a bit worried that their line about the Democrats being negative and haters will be a little undermined by these tactics on their part?)

One might suggest that the idea we should have in mind here is that old line about judging a man's character and mettle by what he does when the seas get stormy rather than what he does when they're calm. But I think the real metaphor to keep in mind is how dangerous and unpredictable an animal becomes when he's cornered.

E.J. Dionne has an excellent piece in Tuesday's Post, the heart of which is this passage ...

What's forgotten is that Bush has a pattern throughout his political career of staying above the fray while others tear his opponents to shreds. The Republicans are trying to weave a clear narrative about Kerry. The above-the-surface part is about his voting record, which Kerry will, indeed, have to defend. The below-the-surface part will paint him as a Vietnam-peacenik-Massachusetts-liberal weirdo.

What he might have added is that almost exactly the same could be said about the president's father. It's a family MO.

From TPM reader Rich D. ...

Bush accused Kerry of waffling on the issues today:

What about Bush:

1) Job projection numbers change within a week or two.
2) The cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit dramatically rise within a few weeks of passage.
3) The timetable and procedure for a transition government in Iraq changes weekly.
4) His statements on who is responsible for the poor WMD intel change weekly.
5) He now denies that Sadddam let the UN inspectors in Iraq.

Dubya stands for Waffle.

Does Kerry have a "Rapid Response" Team?

Now, I like this list. And I thank Rich D. for sending it. But I'm

Indeed, I'm really not sure you can say the president is a waffler at all. His policy positions remain fairly consistent over time. It's not his positions that change, but his facts.

I'd almost say that the president -- or the White House, more broadly -- is something like the inverse of a waffler. He continues with policies even after the factual arguments upon which he initially justified them collapse entirely.

I got into this issue -- the Bush administration's belief in the utter malleability of facts -- in an article last summer in The Washington Monthly. And we'll be returning to it presently.

Could this be what Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot

We're still trying to get to the bottom of what mystery article in a 'national publication' Racicot was referring about when he told Juan Williams that President had volunteered for service in Vietnam but had not been 'selected'.

The only thing we can come up with is this.

At a few points over the last decade President Bush has claimed that he tried to sign up for something called the Palace Alert program, which would have taken him to Southeast Asia.

Now, it seems odd on the face of it that the president's family would pull all these strings to help him jump the queue for a safe spot in the Texas Air National Guard only to have him take the first chance to go to Vietnam. But, as this 1999 interview in The Washington Post makes clear, even the dates don't add up ...

WP: Were you avoiding the draft?

GWB: No, I was becoming a pilot.

WP: You wanted to serve?

GWB: Yes I did.

WP: But when you were asked do you want to go overseas, you said no.

GWB: I didn't know that. But I actually tried to go on a Palace Alert program.

WP: That was later.

GWB: It was. After I became a pilot.

WP: Palace Alert program was being phased out.

GWB: Not really, a couple of my buddies got to go. ...

WP: ... But they'd already graduated.

GWB: That's true. I couldn't go until actually I'd gotten my –

WP: I was curious about the sequence. You got out of combat school on June 23, 1970. Palace Alert programs were all closed down overseas as of June 30. So could you have gone even if you signed up for it?

GWB: I guess not if that's the case, but I remember going to see [the supervisor] to try to get signed up for it. You just ask the commander to put you in. He said you can't go because you're too low on the totem pole. I'm not trying to make this thing any grander than it is. ...

D'oh! as Homer Simpson would say.

As far as I know, there's no documentary evidence that Bush ever tried to sign up for this program which, in the words of the Post, "dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments."

But, as the interview makes clear, even if he did, he seems to have tried to get on board about a week before they shut the program down.

That's sorta like when you show up a couple hours late to shovel manure. "Oh, you guys're d' ... Oh, I'm ... I'm sorry, man. I really wanted to come here and help out, but ... Wow, I feel terrible. Is there anything else I can ... maybe next time? Hey, I'm gonna go grab a sandwich, okay?"

As I said earlier, even the president doesn't even try to push this line anymore. Two weeks ago he told Tim Russert that he'd never volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Ahhhh ... the plot thickens.

We noted earlier that Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot went on NPR this morning and told Juan Williams that

Well, this afternoon Racicot held a conference call with reporters. And during that call, I'm told, he was asked just what he was talking about when he said that the president had volunteered to go to Vietnam.

According a participant in the call, Racicot said that he had read this in a 'national publication', but he couldn't remember which one.

One of Racicot's aides, who was also on the call, promised he'd later provide the mystery article to the reporter who had asked the question.

Now there've been a few articles I've seen in which friends of the president's from the time in question have said that at the time Bush expressed some interest in volunteering for service in Vietnam. But there is no evidence for this in his records. The one piece of evidence we have is that the president said on his enlistment papers that he did not want to serve overseas. And the president himself just two weeks said he didn't volunteer for service in Vietnam.

So, now we know that Racicot didn't mispeak. He's standing behind what appears to be a demonstrable falsehood and pegging his claim to some article in a 'national publication'.

Racicot is going around the country and hitting every media outlet around attacking John Kerry's record on national defense -- which he is certainly entitled to do. And at the same time, he's peddling blatant falsehoods about the president's military service that not one publication has yet chosen to call him on.

Go figure ...

Run it by the boss first?

This morning we noted that Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot tried to float the demonstrably false line that President Bush had volunteered for service in Vietnam, but hadn't been 'selected'.

Now, our first thought was that Mr. Racicot might be angling to be the next winner of the 'Heather Wilson "I think the American people are a bunch of god-forsaken idiots" Award'.

But this isn't just a blatant mistatement of the facts that Racicot apparently believes the press will be too timid to call him on. He's even contradicting what the president himself said only two weeks ago.

Let's go to the tape ...

"He (i.e. the president) signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well."

Marc Racicot
NPR Interview
February 23rd, 2004

Now, here's what the president himself said just two weeks ago ...

RUSSERT: Were you favor of the war in Vietnam?

BUSH: I supported my government. I did. And would have gone had my unit been called up, by the way.

RUSSERT: But you didn't volunteer or enlist to go.

BUSH: No, I didn't. You're right.

Meet The Press
February 8th, 2004

And here's an even more candid version of events from the president from fourteen years ago ...

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

George W. Bush, 1990
as quoted in The Houston Chronicle
May 8th, 1994.

No doubt there are

But let's just consider what Racicot is doing here.

This wasn't a slip of the tongue. This was deliberate. Now that the topic has been moved a bit to the back burner, they're trying to get back on the offensive by floating a deliberate and undeniable deception in the hopes that no one will notice. If no one does then the new false story will become the accepted version in the coming campaign debate.

You really can't let your eyes off them for a second.

Is anyone going to ask the campaign or the White House whether their new line is that the president volunteered to go to Vietnam but just never got picked?

Just when you start debating how much or whether the president's military service record should be an issue in this campaign, you realize that the main reason it's

This morning Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot was interviewed by Juan Williams on NPR. When asked about the president's Air National Guard service he said, the president's and John Kerry's service "compare very favorably... He (i.e. the president) signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well …"

He volunteered to go to Vietnam?

Marc, no he didn't.

Does he think no one is listening?

(For some reason Williams, made no effort to call him on it.)

Let's set aside the fact that pulling strings to get into the Air National Guard in 1968 is, on its face, quite the opposite of volunteering to go to Vietnam. When the president signed up for the National Guard there was a check box asking whether he wanted to volunteer for overseas service. And he checked off "do not volunteer."

Now, the president's defenders have tried to explain this in various ways, hypothesizing that some unknown other person checked off the box or, more plausibly, that he was instructed to do so since what he was actually signing up for was to fly planes in Texas. Of late, they've brought forward friends or fellow Guardsmen who say -- with no documentary evidence whatsoever -- that Bush at one point or another asked about serving in Vietnam.

(There is also the president's claim that he volunteered for something called Palace Alert, a program that would have taken him to Thailand. But I believe there is no record of this. And as noted in this Washington Post interview from 1999, if he did sign up, it would have been within a week of the program's being shut down -- a fact that points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that if he did sign up, he did so to sign up, not to go.)

But however that may be, it is awfully hard to turn the "do not volunteer" into "do volunteer."

This is just a preview of what we're certain to see from the Bush campaign this year since it follows past practice so closely: Wait till the brouhaha subsides and then hopscotch over the remaining unanswered questions about the president's service by making stuff up that is flatly contradicted by the record.

Who's going to call them on this?

"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Those were the words

The "what was said before" that Chalabi is referring to, of course, are the numerous bogus claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction he peddled into American governmental channels over the last half dozen years and more.

After these words he was kind enough to say that "the Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

Now, I can't say that I was particularly surprised by this, though I didn't expect him to be quite so public about it. For months, when asked about what happened with all their crackerjack intel and defectors, those in Chalabi's entourage have responded with a blase version of 'the ends justify the means'. The general idea they communicate is: Okay, so there weren't any weapons. But we wanted Saddam gone. And he's gone. Our conscience is clean.

Not quite an admission, but also quite a ways from a denial. In other words, more or less what Chalabi told the Telegraph: "What was said before is not important."

Now, to me Chalabi's motives are extremely suspect. But there are many, many Iraqi nationalists who were willing to do or sacrifice anything to rid their country of this brutal dictator. And from that perspective I can understand how their consciences would be clear. They're not Americans. They're not bound up in the ins-and-outs of truth-telling in the context of American domestic politics. Their primary interest is not the vital interests of the United States. What they're trying to do is overthrow a tyrant in their country. And if that means hoodwinking the great power to come in and do the job or perhaps just telling the leaders of the great power what they want to hear, then so be it.

There's no point belaboring this hypothetical. I don't think it really applies to the people in question here. I am only trying to sketch out a potential way to see the rights and wrongs of all this from a very different perspective.

However that may be, Chalabi seems to be at the point of all but calling us suckers to our faces. If we were scammed, you'd think we'd be a bit angry about it -- right? -- even if we helped bring it on ourselves and even if some of our leaders were complicit in the scam.

Yet, we really don't seem to be angry at all. We funded Chalabi's pre-war intelligence operation in Iraq -- thus placing ourselves in the pathbreaking position of bankrolling a disinformation campaign against ourselves. (Much of his other money came from Iran. But we can get into that later.) And amazingly, we're still funding it.

According to this KnightRidder article from late last week the Pentagon has set aside between $3 and $4 million to fund Chalabi's Information Collection Program through 2004. So we want to keep buying Chalabi's prized intel for at least the next ten months?

We're far past the point where there's any question that basically all the intel we got from Chalabi was bogus. We're not far from the point of concluding that it was knowingly bogus or at least passed on with a willful indifference to its validity. And we're still going to pay his 'intelligence' operation $4 million more this year?

Isn't the $400 million worth of contracts to companies tied to his family enough to keep him happy?

I’ve had a number of readers ask me why I would repeat John Kerry’s ‘bring it on’ language and implicitly endorse Max Cleland’s dig at Saxby Chambliss.

There are actually several questions here. So let me try to answer each in their turn.

The

So is this hypocritical?

Well, in a limited sense, of course it is. But let's look at what those who make this argument really want.

[Thinking this over, if anything, I think I've overstated the matter. As I've said previously, if the president would simply tell the truth about his military service, it really wouldn't be a very deal. Of course, at this point he's made his bed.]

Republicans believe past military service counts on political and character grounds. So without a flutter of conscience they can maul Democrats who don't match up and even many who do. But Democrats don't think it should matter. So they should remain mum when Republicans run candidates who skated out of military service with whipped up medical ailments or political connections.

That sounds to me like unilateral disarmament, which last I heard is something Republicans don't believe in. I can understand why Republicans would want a political rule book that permits aggressive attacks by Republicans and prescribes timidity from Democrats. But I can't fathom why Democrats should go along with it.

Then there's another point. Some people say some version of the following: Democrats are naive if they think Kerry's Vietnam service will stop him from getting a Republican mauling. After all, look what good it did Max Cleland.

Good point. But this isn't the reasoning. Or, at least, it's not my reasoning. I think it'll be different this time because the Democrats will go on the offensive early and not let up. The fact that Kerry is also a decorated Veteran helps a lot. But the determination to fight back is the fundamental difference. Without that, his record might well be of little consequence.

Yet another point.

Some have said explicitly and others have implied that the new attacks on Kerry's war protestor record are either payback for the attacks on Bush or the logical consequence of the Dems hitting the president on his service record. This is, I think, a subtext to a lot of the higher-minded commentary -- that, shall we say, of the supercilious center.

To this I can only say that, to paraphrase the immortal Mr. T, I pity the fool who actually believes this. All past experience and present evidence tells us these attacks were on the way regardless. As I noted a couple weeks ago in The Hill, this is simply Democrats embracing a political variant of the Bush Doctrine of preemption. The only difference being that they actually know their opponents have the weapons.

The deeper question here is whether Democrats should be campaigners and campaign critics-cum-ethicists at the same time, rather than hitting their political opponents on every point of vulnerability. And I think it's a question most of them have already answered for themselves over the last three years. We'll return to this and the broader issue of Democratic foreign policy in subsequent posts.

Here are some questions that might be very worthwhile to pose to Scott McClellan tomorrow morning.

The president has instructed members of the White House staff (everyone in the Executive Office of the President) to cooperate fully with the Plame investigation. Does that order to cooperate amount to a bar on White House employees taking the fifth with investigators?

Does the president find it acceptable for members of his staff to invoke their fifth amendment rights in a criminal investigation and still remain on the payroll?

Does the president know whether members of his staff have invoked their right against self-incrimination in the Plame investigation?

Bill Richardson this morning on Ralph Nader ...

“It’s his personal vanity because he has no movement. Nobody’s backing him,” New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday in advance of Nader’s announcement.

“The Greens aren’t backing him. His friends urge him not to do it. It’s all about himself,” Richardson told “Fox News Sunday.”

“Now, Ralph’s made some great contributions to consumer issues over the years, but clearly it’s not going to help us,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll have a sizable impact, but it’s terrible if he goes ahead because it’s about him. It’s about his ego. It’s about his vanity and not about a movement that supposedly he headed for many years very effectively.”

A more generous version of my thoughts.

Visit Nader's new website to see some amazingly comical sophistry about how his being in the race will make it more likely that a Democrat will be elected president.