FOOL ME ONCE, TWICE, THRICE ...

Heavy travel schedule has kept me busy this week, and I'm really out of touch with the news. I'm back in Dallas for a few days and will try to catch up.

I did hear Bill Schneider on CNN this morning in response to the question "Now that Zarqawi has been killed and the Iraqi government has filled key positions, has he gotten a bounce in the polls?" say "In a word, no."

The bad news is that Karl Rove won't be indicted for his part in outing Valerie Plame. The good news is that he's going to continue to make the so-called "war on terror" the driving force behind his political strategy for the midterm elections. It won't work this time. Only the hard-core true believers think Bush and the Republicans have made us safer. American foreign-policy experts say au contraire.

In the survey's accompanying report, Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said policy analysts have never been in such agreement.

"The reason is that it's clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force."

Then I heard on the radio at lunch Bush signing the miners safety bill with the remark that mining "is hard work." Think Bush betrays his aversion every time he refers to hard work? If it's "hard work" he ain't doing it any time soon. It's "hard work" trying to govern, it's "hard work" trying to win the war on terror, it's "hard work" trying to rescue the victims of Katrina.

Tags: Iraq war, war on terror