Credible

In Gaggleland, Scotty McClellan is still playing his balancing act on Uzbekistan: “Obviously, we have continued to urge restraint by all and for all to work for calm in Uzbekistan.” A reporter compared this restraint with Bush’s 2002 attack on Castro for arresting dissidents, but not killing or boiling them. Little Scotty denies that this is a double standard: “Obviously, Terry, there are different circumstances around the world. You have to deal with those different circumstances.” So that clears that up. Obviously. When a reporter started talking about the US rendering prisoners to Uz., Scotty cut him off.

He also ignored a question about whether Posada is a terrorist.

And he suggested that Newsweek reporters and editors travel the earth as penitents, apologizing one by one to every human being on the planet. It’s the very least they could do.

McClellan on the nuclear option: “I think it would have consequences for the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate if they continue to hold up progress on the important priorities for the American people. The American people elected us to get things done.” Democrats were, of course, elected by the Cuban people.

Which is practically what the Republican party does say in an email today claiming that the Democrats stole the Washington gubernatorial election in 2004.

The military is still investigating whether any Korans were flushed down any toilets. It is doing so by checking log entries and other documents; it is conducting no interviews. Because obviously (shit, now McClellan has me doing it) if you did flush a Koran, you’d enter that in the log. The only paper trail that could solve this case — and I suspect you’re all way ahead of me now — would involve soggy, shit-covered pages of the Koran. This is the time-honored Pentagon investigatorial technique: when Colin Powell investigated the My Lai massacre, he too conducted no interviews, and concluded that no massacre took place. Pentagon spokesmodel Larry DiRita says the allegation of Koran-dumping has been made many times before but never investigated because the allegations were not “credible” and the prisoners were probably lying. I’d like to know his definition of “credible.”