MAUREEN DOWD'S EDGY FLUFF
My Private Idaho

From the New York Times courtesy of BuzzFlash:

For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on America's war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war - now that all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.

"We owe them something," he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.

Click here for the rest.

Generally, I detest the way the New York Times' token female pundit stylistically emphasizes her fluffy status as a woman-among-men: that is, she's knows she's a token, and seems to play that role to the hilt. Sometimes, however, among the meaningless critiques of politicians' clothing and hair, she manages to make some good points. In this particular essay, she starts out in typical form, meditating on the President's vacation, but by the column's end she's Lady Macbeth, going for Bush's jugular. I do wish she'd drop the bullshit Melanie Wilkes routine more often because this is a good piece, much more worthy of Scarlet O'Hara. Indeed, I think Dowd has a bit of Molly Ivins deep inside her.

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