In case you hadn't noticed, President Bush is tap-dancing around the "progress" message again.  The fine folks at the AAEII put together this series of clips to be certain that folks like Sen. Mitch McConnell and his constitutuents are well aware of the rose-colored tap dancing. 

This campaign is having an effect on folks like Sen. Susan Collins (Turncoat Joe's BFF), who has been facing increasing pressure to change her rubber stamp stance on Iraq from her constituents and from Tom Allen -- whose fundraising numbers [Thanks to so many of you!] have been fantastic this past quarter.  (You can donate to the Allen campaign here.)

If you missed the Presidential press conference yesterday, Dan Froomkin has some...erm...highlights.  As AJ at Americablog pointed out yesterday, the claims that the President and his new military spokesperson "Baghdad Bergner" (h/t to emptywheel for the nickname) have been making are, quite simply, false:

Anyone who claims that the so-called al Qaeda in Iraq group is the "principal threat" to anything in that nation -- whether its citizens, the government, the political process, or any specific ethnic or sectarian group -- is either grossly ignorant of the realities of the Iraq war or blatantly lying. I honestly have no idea which it is in this case, though it's worth noting that the chief U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, was employed as a Special Assistant to the President prior to his current appointment.

Most reliable estimates put the fundamentalist/jihadist/al Qaeda actors in Iraq at around 3-5% of the total insurgency, with virtually no approximations exceeding 10%. I really cannot overstate how misleading it is to focus on al Qaeda when the driving forces of the conflict are average, native, very pissed-off -- but not religious fundamentalist -- Iraqis. The vast majority of the Sunni population is relatively secular (more secular, in fact, than Iraqi Shia), and even tacit support of jihadists is founded in anti-American sentiment. Even the sectarian violence is fueled more by localized conflicts between Sunni and Shia families, tribes, and militias than by al Qaeda.

It is true that AQI groups commit the most spectacular attacks, including the vast majority of suicide bombings, but if the underlying problems were solved, or even addressed (including, but not limited to, oil revenue sharing, federalism, de-Ba'athification, provincial elections, etc.), AQI would lose most of its ability to operate because it would have no support on the ground.

See how simple that was?  I'm with Will Bunch: why can't the NYTimes or other folks in the media simply say flat out that Bush is lying, rather than couching it in the "great oversimplification" language?  Or is that too difficult, because it would require them to own up to all that bad steno reporting in the run up to the Iraq invasion?

I have said this before, but it bears repeating:

The price of the failures of the last six years is steep.  We have lost something that will be years in the regaining, if ever, and that is our national integrity.  I keep going back to the basics that Dan Froomkin laid out in his Neiman piece back in February — that any of it had to be written down astonishes me, but clearly there is a desperate need for some plain-spoken common sense.  Skepticism ought not be a lost art, especially in Washington, D.C., given the penchant for spin that so many within the Beltway possess.  Someone's interpretation of events is variable, depending on the perspective, but the facts themselves ought not be malleable.  And we would do well to remind ourselves of that frequently.

What I would like is more reporting which lays out clearly when someone is giving personal opinion, and what is based on hard, cold fact; what is interpretive, and what is analytical; what interest or rationale is propelling the analysis, and what is behind a particular push — in short, the surrounding circumstances and the history alongside the spin, including some background on the person doing the spinning.  This is what we try to do here every day, and what people do all across the blogs on both sides of the aisle — people do not get information in a vaccuum, they are sophisticated enough to know that there is context behind every parsed, focus-group-tested phrasing.  What we do not need from the press is more sales pitch — instead, we would, as Sanger suggests, appreciate a bit more deconstruction.  And some plain, old honesty and skepticism from the people we depend on to peer into the halls of power and report not just what they are told to say, but also what those who are doing the telling would prefer that we not know — the devil, as they say, is in the details.

Transparency in government is necessary.  It is equally appreciated in reporting.  It puts us all on an equal footing, trying to parse out the reality from the malfeasance which can only, in the long run, serve as a deterrent to those who would seek to use the public sphere as their own, personal ideological playground. 

Wouldn't we all like a little more candor -- from our politicians and the media -- and a lot less faux equivalence disguised as some sort of pretend balancing act that we are expected to swallow whole, despite the bitter aftertaste that such falsehoods leave behind?

Here's a good place to start:  what plans does the US have for a retreat from Iraq, if one becomes necessary, or for our exit when that time comes?  I have this recurring nightmare based on this post that Steve Gilliard did for us a while ago (man, do I miss Steve!) about a fighting retreat.  This nightmare scenario hit me again with a jolt this morning, as I was driving back from the preschool dropoff, as NPR was reporting on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Richard Lugar regarding the need for the DOD to plan for an exit strategy because he does not feel that we have one at the moment.

All this time, all these speeches about "progress," and still the Bush Administration has not bothered to do the basic work that ought to be required before we ever send our troops into harm's way.  All.  This.  Time.  It is not surprising, but it is infuriating nonetheless, and the word that leaps to mind, over and over again thinking about it and about the ludicrous talking points tap dance of a press conference yesterday is "liar."

Of course, I suppose we have to consider the source...