Melanie notes that according to a report in the Washington Post as of Monday the Shrubbery has spent 365 days at Camp David and 405 days in Crawford.

When you throw in all of his political trips, I’m not sure he makes the cut for full-time employment. We should rent out the White House and try to make some money on it, because the Shrubbery is treating it like a time-share.

With two wars in progress and the so-called Global War on Terrorism™ most Presidents would spend some time at the office.

On this, the anniversary of the start of the first Gulf War, Pierre Tristam notes Peter Arnett’s Prophesies. It took Arnett less than two weeks to figure Bush’s War was off the rails and the Iraqis weren’t going to play by the expected rules.

Except…the Iraqis did exactly what should have been expected with a senior officer corps trained in Soviet doctrine. Apparently all of the “Cold Warriors” forgot about the basic strategy of the Russian/Soviet military since it proved so successful against Napoleon and the Wehrmacht: when the homeland is invaded by a superior force, draw them into the country to extend supply lines and then fight a war of attrition. When the Iraqi army refused to give battle in large unit engagements, it should have been obvious that this was going to be an extended guerrilla war. Napoleon didn’t win when he seized Moscow, and the Germans didn’t win when they lay siege to Stalingrad. They were stretched too thin and couldn’t control the land they had taken.

Of course Arnett had to be fired. You can’t have people running around speaking truth when the “Leader” doesn’t want to hear it.

Perhaps it’s just to annoy people, but the BBC has a tendency to interview Frank J. Gaffney Jr. of the Center for Security Policy, a neocon think tank, about Iraq.

The man is an ignorant fool who has not made a minimal effort to understand the major players in Iraq. He made constant references to Moqtada al Sadr and Iran, at one point calling him “a puppet of Iran.”

Al Sadr is an Iraqi nationalist, and may be the only major player who wants all foreigners, not just the Americans out of Iraq. He has his own forms of madness, but working with the Iranians isn’t one of them.

Gaffney probably approved of the Shrubbery’s outreach to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI] and associated with the Badr Organization militia. The SCIRI backed Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. They spent much of the Saddam years living in Iran. They have unquestioned ties to Iran and the Revolutionary Guard. They want a theocratic government, just like Iran.

Gaffney et al. may have a problem finding the Madhi army, because, as Swopa notes, Nobody here but us death squads. They are hanging loose waiting for their official Iraqi government uniforms, just like the ones the Badr Organization already has.

I like Monty Python as much as the next guy, but the BBC shouldn’t do these improv versions during the news.