Frustrated Taleban, incremental marching, and running the country like a chef. Pass the ketchup.

I’ve been waiting for a couple of days to see if the Pentagon website would have something to say about the Afghan bombings. And today, there is a glancing reference in a story whose headline on the main page is “Afghan Troops’ Progress Frustrates Taliban,” though if you click on it, the headline is “Afghan Violence Reflects Afghan Troops’ Progress, Taliban Frustration.” Evidently, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, the increase in violence is a sign of the enemies’ desperation. After the massacre, Gen. Carter Ham, a long-time favorite of this blog and the possessor of the most WASPy name in all Christendom, has the gall to talk about “the great measures we take to try to protect noncombatants.”

Bush said at his press conference with Olmert that oh sure Iraq is bad, “If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing.” Somebody noted yesterday that “incremental” is his new favorite word, although he seems to have confused it with “imperceptible.”

I didn’t find any material in it worth making fun of, but yesterday Bush gave a speech on The War Against Terror (TWAT) to the National Restaurant Association, which is pretty funny in and of itself. In the q&a, somebody praised him for running the country “the way a chef would run the country.”

Olmert said that Israel will go ahead with the plan to spend money on health care for the Palestinians, using taxes collected from the Palestinians and illegally held by Israel. Although when he said it, it sounded a lot more generous than when I said it.