Later Donald Rumsfeld was asked about these jokes in a news conference.  He ducked it – no opinion.  "To know what I would think, I would have to be there."  Yeah.  Right.  This from the man who knew exactly where the WMD were and told us all Hans Blix was an obstructionist fool from “Old Europe.”

If you hopped on the Drudge Report you find what Matt says is the Kerry press release about this. 

If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought.  Unfortunately for the President, this is not a joke. 

585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded, and there's no end in sight.  Bush Turned White House Credibility into a Joke George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction.  But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's funny? 

"George Bush didn't tell us the truth about the economy, about job loss, about the true cost of his deceptive prescription drug plan, or about the existence of weapons of mass destruction.  There's nothing funny about that."

The evening after the event, on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews’ show, one of the guests was a young White House spokesman – Tucker Eskew, a Bush Campaign spokesman.

Matthews, who had just done a piece on the kids, our soldiers, he visited at Walter Reed Hospital – some of the more than three thousand amputees and blinded from the war – lit into to this White House flak with a vengeance.  Matthews was at that Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner, and was one of the few who didn’t laugh.  He asked the White House guy if Bush would use the same jokes if he ever got around to visiting the wounded, or to attending a service funeral.  It wasn’t pretty.  The poor fellow from the White House got slammed hard and had little to say.  Hey, what’s to say? 

David Corn is less charitable. 

Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S.  military action in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut - which killed over 200 American servicemen - and said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light."  Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia - during which U.S.  bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there - and said, "The problem is, those embassies - they all look alike."

Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands.  This was a callous and arrogant display.  For Bush, the misinformation - or disinformation - he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks.  …

Harsh. 

Oh well.  Bush may apologize. 

But I’d guess he won’t – not his style.  And this will pass.  But some of us will remember. 

But then the Richard Clarke accusations led to another odd thing that indicates the administration really does need to “calibrate its tone” – as some things like this just look bad. 

See White House Asks 9/11 Panel to Meet Rice
JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer, Thursday, March 25, 2004

The scoop? 

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday asked the independent commission investigating the Sept.  11 terrorist attacks to give national security adviser Condoleezza Rice another opportunity to talk privately with panel members. 

The White House said, in a letter to the commission chairman and vice chairman from counsel Alberto Gonzales, that such a session would allow her to clear up "a number of mischaracterizations of Dr.  Rice's statements and positions."

Rice still would not testify publicly before the panel, as the members and many relatives of victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks want.  Gonzales wrote that is important that presidential advisers such as Rice "not be compelled to testify publicly before congressional bodies such as the Commission."

Of course if you read the whole thing you discover the core issue is that Rice adamantly refuses that this meeting be public in any way at all.  Heck, perhaps that is politically wise.  You don’t want to get in any sort of “who looks more credible on camera” thing with that Clarke fellow.  You might lose.  So keep it private. 

But the really curious thing is that Rice is equally adamant that she not by put under oath – as in “Keep that damned Bible away from me!”  She won’t be held accountable in THAT way.  Not her.  This is not testimony in some damned courtroom where you swear you’re telling the truth.  It’s just a chat to clear up some misconceptions. 

Here’s the basic political problem with all this…

Does Karl Rove, Bush’s political advisor, understand how bad this all looks?  In the these eighteen hours Clarke makes this stunning apology to the families who lost folks on September 11 – implying those who don’t apologize are arrogant bastards who don’t understand what real people feel.  Then Bush makes his jokes about the missing WMD – a few miles from the hospital where our guys are working on how to live the rest of their lives without a leg or an arm or without their eyes.  Hey, he didn’t know the WMD weren't there - and it is kind of funny, isn't it?  I guess that depends on your perspective. 

Then late in the same evening the Rice woman says she’s changed her mind - she WILL explain herself, but only privately – on not on the record. 

Karl, this is not way to make things look good.  

___


Footnote (a new meme is born):

But then again, in the Republican primaries leading up to the 2000 election, Karl Rove saw how John McCain was gaining ground on Bush in South Carolina and suddenly there were all those stories popping up everywhere about how McCain might have fathered a “nigger baby” – and the rest is history.  Good move, Karl. 

And then on CNN’s show “Crossfire” Bob Novak did after all imply that Richard Clarke may have more than his points about Bush and the administration being wrong on terrorism.  Novak is hinting the real problem is Richard Clarke has a problem with African-American women like Condoleezza Rice.  Really – see this.  Must be some racial-sexual hang-up. 

Or maybe Richard Clarke is just a plain old racist, as Ann Coulter suggests:

Isn't that just like a liberal?  The chair-warmer describes Bush as a cowboy and Rumsfeld as his gunslinger -- but the black chick is a dummy.  Maybe even as dumb as Clarence Thomas.  Perhaps someday liberals could map out the relative intelligence of various black government officials for us.