This was nothing but another bush photo op. If they had more than 25 seconds apiece to speak I doubt they would say anything to upset bush. I work as a court reporter, and you can see how our "leaders" (our lawyers) are failing us every day. Everyone else has to follow the rules of court except the lawyers. Our law system is nothing but a lawyers' club. It must be the same way for nurses, they work with the doctors' club.

In my opinion, the way to fix the system, at least a start, is publicly funded political campaigns similar to the system in the state of Arizona. As it is now, our representatives spend most of their time begging money and they owing favors in return. Send them to Washington to work, not beg money.

Hi Mr. D,

Found your weblog via a buddy of mine (an ex-pat in the UK) who sent me a link to your book's page on Amazon, which he got via antiwar.com. I am slightly but not entirely surprised at the lack of commenters here! (I help a former professor of mine maintain a blog at http://www.grokyourworld.com but we don't get a lot of traffic or commenters there.)

Anyway, this post is right on. And it ties right into what we've said at Grok Your World, which is that it was bad enough that Clinton did so little to raise the level of discourse during his eight years in office (e.g., never calling bullshit on Reaganism) but his photo-opping with Bush and his father after Katrina was downright disgusting. And then this?! Is it true that Powell didn't say anything?

It was a disgusting exercise...get some face time with the Prez, increase your consulting fee. Why wasn't Murtha invtied? THAT would be "reaching out to critics." Indeed, it is Murtha who highlighted the problem that King George speaks only to his Yes-men.
This ritual was a way of signalling to the corporate media who is in the foreign policy consensus...and who stands outside. Advocates of immediate withdrawal, like Murtha, are outside and therefore not to be taken seriously. It is precisely this deliberate narrowing of debate that produces debacles like Iraq.

To me the most interesting part of this story is the absence of any real coverage of it in mainstream newsmedia. Here in Austin, Texas, which has perhaps the worst newspaper for a state capital this side of Jackson, MS, and certainly the worst for a capital of the second most populous state (Yep, Texas has been bigger than NY for over a decade now, folks) there wasn't word one on this story. NONE.

NONE of these former high rankers take the war and our defeat already therein seriously enough to use the only opportunity they will ever be given to yell at W to his face to come to his senses? What a sorry bunch of yellowbellied wankers they all are, every last single one of them.