Molly Ivins

It's times like this I long for Al Gore to have watched State Of The Union, a Tracy/Hepburn film directed by Frank Capra that if he'd watched, he'd be president today. (And from which Ronald Reagan stole one of the most widely quoted examples of his "wit.")

The lovely and talented Ms. Ivins has a couple of items that could make me re-think my resistance to the idea of another Gore run. First, the latest on what we did, what our soldiers did for us, in Haditha.

So, Haditha becomes another of the names at which we wince, along with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and My Lai. Tell you what: Let’s not use the “stress of combat” excuse this time. According to neighbors, the girls in the family of Younis Khafif—the one who kept pleading in English, “I am a friend. I am good”—were 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1. What are they going to say? “Under stress of combat, we thought the baby was 2”?

Then this latest example of the way the Bush administration handles screw-ups: With reward and promotion.

Two weeks ago, Amir Taheri had an Op-Ed article in the Canadian National Post claiming that the Iranians have a law requiring Jews to wear yellow badges. It turned out to be a complete fabrication and has been the subject of much contempt among bloggers. So Tuesday, Taheri was invited to the White House along with other “experts” to give the president their “honest opinions.” With advice like that, our war in Iran will be a slam-dunk.

But in the end, you have to thank god for the English and their sense of wit, as Molly says:

Tony Blair...joined Bush in a mistake-admitting-athon last week. (The Prez is sorry he talked “too tough” to the terrorists.) Neither of them thought to name “the war in Iraq,” for example, as a mistake. But, as The Economist rather unkindly put it, their meeting was “The Axis of Feeble."