Imagine what he knows about Iraq?

"George, not listening. Time for Sports Center"

Earlier this week I linked to a Newsweek article that contains this statement:

Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street.

So how bad does it have to be to tell him bad news about Iraq.

Of course, this has been written about before.

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news."

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

So, who will discuss this news with Bush...or will anyone discuss it at all?

A suicide car bomber struck as day laborers gathered to find work in a Shiite neighborhood in north Baghdad, killing at least 88 people and wounding 227 in the deadliest of a series of attacks in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday.

This was just the big blast in a day that has left at least 105 total dead in Iraq.

Who will tell the President?

This is not just comedic fodder, such as it is, it is damned frightening. You cannot start a war and then demand only hap, hap, happy news. You have a responsibility to the kids you send over there jackass -- and to the people whose country you invaded ostensibly to make their lives better.

To be President this way is to be criminally negligent. But what do you expect from him regarding his background, is anyone truly surprised? Even the wingnuts view him as an empty vessel...which is even more frightening. At least Chauncey Gardner would not have invaded a country.