Made up to be seen from 30 feet away

Raymond Chandler described one of his characters this way: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.” George Bush’s pronouncements are increasingly just a collection of words he likes, formed into things that look like sentences from 30 feet away, but which dissolve into nonsense if you look even a little more closely at them: “Iraqi citizens are seeing a determined effort by responsible citizens to lead to a more hopeful tomorrow, and I am optimistic we’ll succeed.”

Kerry’s new position on Iraq (yeah, I know, I sound like Bush when I say that, but it really is a new position) is that if Bush hadn’t cut off the UN inspections process prematurely, it would have shown that Iraq had no WMDs, and that fact being made public, by itself, would somehow have caused Saddam Hussein to fall, because his regime was based on his having WMDs. Oh, I don’t think so.