Let The Distancing Continue, Part II

This Daily News article is a little hard to get a handle on. On the one hand, it contains quotes from unnamed White House sources that are obviously aimed at putting some distance between Bush and the rest of his team while simultaneously making it sound as if Bush is in charge:

. . . Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the run-up to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Nice try, folks, but I've never really been able to buy into talk like that, mostly because it is clear that Bush had a major hand in leading this country into the Iraq Debacle.

After all, it was Bush -- a full year before the Iraq Invasion -- who told TIME Magazine: "F*#k Saddam -- we're taking him out." And we now know from Richard Clarke that Bush was hyper-focused on Iraq in the days immediately following 9-11:

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

So when I read stuff about how mad Bush is at Cheney for being "overly involved in intelligence issues in the run-up to the Iraq war," I have to laugh because these unnamed White House officials are clearly lying. I have no doubt that Bush knew what Cheney was doing and that Bush may have even been pushing Cheney to go over to CIA Headquarters and "kick some ass" when it came to intelligence on Iraq.

But today's Daily News article also contains statements that probably have some truth to them. Here are some examples:

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."

A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows "some of these things are self-inflicted," like the Miers nomination, where Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer.

"He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good," another key adviser said.

The Daily News piece does effectively portray a White House that is bracing for what will certainly be a very difficult next few weeks. I just don't believe everything that these unnamed White House officials are saying.