"Bush's heart and mind"

* laura on sunday's wapo A1:

"A White House conspiracy to punish Wilson, and look where it's gotten everybody. Iraq is a disaster no one could have imagined in 2003 (who could have imagined in 2003 that the thought would be widespread come three years later that the US could lose in Iraq? Which anti-war Democrat could have imagined the Bush administration and Rumsfeld would have allowed the US to lose?), Bush, Cheney and Libby have been exposed as such petty, vindictive, self-obsessed types, incapable of saving the counry from Hurricane Katrina much less a terrorist attack, the president's popularity rating has dropped so low few House Republicans want to be seen with him in their districts, and Iran is allegedly moving ahead with its nuclear aspirations. What left is there to say? They have a record. What is there to show for it?"

* laura on mick smith's niger forgeries article:

"This sounds like Italian government disinformation to me. As I reported in The American Prospect recently, "La Signora" almost certainly got the Niger forgeries from the Italian intelligence agency Sismi, for which she had worked as a Sismi mole inside two African embassies in Rome for decades
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After the Italian elections Sunday, more is likely to come out on this."

* laura on hersh:

"Let's hope this is all part of some massive disinformation campaign. It's hard to know. But it may be about a fight inside the administration, between the Veep's office and the State Department, for Bush's heart and mind. Dana Priest's article last Sunday about the possibility of Iranian backed terrorism against the US in retaliation for possible air strikes would seem to suggest that strikes are being contemplated at a more immediate level than at least I had realized. But it was also likely sourced by people in the bureaucracy who a) believe strikes are being contemplated and b) are trying to warn about the possible consequences. How can the US seem to have three Iran policies at once? Because there doesn't seem to be anyone at home where there needs to be. It's a sorry observation that 24 seems to have written this script."

i suspect that "Bush's heart and mind" was an exercise in literary license.