Relaxed but strategic

Maliki has evidently rescinded his demand that the work on the Dubya Wall be halted, and it has resumed.

A good E.J. Dionne piece on the Bushies’ denigration of legitimate disagreement with their policies as partisan politics.

Bush met today with Japan’s nationalist PM Shinzo Abe. Said Bush, “Our talks were very relaxed, but they were strategic.”

Abe will soon be traveling to the Middle East. Said Bush, “I will remind him he’ll be traveling into an important region”. George is nothing if not informative.

“I’m absolutely convinced the Japanese people will be better off when they eat American beef,” he said mysteriously.

Talking about the environment and energy, he said that “there’s a lot of work that Japan and the United States can do together” on nuclear energy. Somehow I don’t have the heart today to make a Hiroshima crack.

Abe talked about the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens, after making another clarification of his remarks on “comfort women” that used a lot of passive voice and didn’t quite acknowledge the abduction of Korean, Chinese and other women by the Japanese army. Bush said of the abductions that he will work “to get this issue resolved in a way that touches the human heart”. On comfort women, Bush said, “I accept the Prime Minister’s apology.” He accepts? I didn’t know Bush was a comfort woman. It would explain a lot.

A reporter named Deb (AP’s Deb Reichmann, I believe) managed to be stupider than Bush, who she accused of having gone soft on North Korea, thinking he’d said he had unlimited patience with its government (Bush had, in an admittedly rare correct use of the double negative, said his patience was “not unlimited”) and not having the wit to wonder if she’d maybe misheard him.

Asked about the Iraq spending bill, Bush said he will veto it “because members of Congress have made military decisions on behalf of the military”. When precisely did the US military declare independence from the US? “I’m just envisioning what it would be like to be a young soldier in the middle of Iraq and realizing that politicians have all of the sudden made military determinations.” “Mission accomplished,” anyone? And since when is Bush himself not a politician?

“I’m sorry it’s come to this. In other words, I’m sorry that we’ve had this, you know, the issue evolve the way it has.” He threatened Congress not to “test my will” over timetables, adding, “In other words, I don’t like tests.” (I may have made that last bit up.) He did say, reaching out to Democrats by implying they had only temporarily gone insane, “I think we can come to our senses and make sure that we get the money to the troops in a timely fashion.” We?