Today's Press Conference

Salon's War Room blog has a good wrap-up of it and Bush's return to hanging with the straw man:

Over the weekend, the Associated Press documented the way in which Bush uses "straw man" arguments in his speeches. When the president says that "some say" or "there are some who believe," an unfair characterization of somebody else's beliefs is sure to follow. "The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents," AP reporter Jennifer Loven wrote.

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Maybe Bush wasn't trying to illustrate Loven's point today at his press conference today, but it sure did seem like it. To hear the president tell it, there are "some in this country" who "don't view the enemy" as the serious threat he does. "I guess they, kind of, view it as an isolated group of people that occasionally kill," Bush explained. "I just don't see it that way. I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries." Likewise, Bush said, when faced with warnings that al-Qaida will use Iraq as a base for destabilizing the Middle East, "maybe some discount those words as, kind of, meaningless propaganda." "I don't," Bush said. "I take them seriously. And I think everyone in government should take them seriously and respond accordingly."

To whom, exactly, was the president referring? Maybe he didn't realize what a threat al-Qaida was back in 2001, but we can't think of a soul "in this country" today who thinks that al-Qaida isn't a serious threat now. And while the president and his aides rushed into Iraq despite warnings that a war there could destabilize the entire Middle East, we can't think of anyone "in the government" today -- except for Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, of course -- who would "discount" the threat that the war in Iraq presents now.

But Bush was just getting started. He said he has a message for "people" who say that the blessings of liberty should only "for one group of people": You -- whoever you are -- are "denying the basic rights to others." And even when the president named names, he seemed incapable of taking anything other than a caricature approach to the ideas of the opposition. Accusing the Democrats of political cowardice, Bush said he's noticed that "nobody from the Democratic Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program."

"You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it," Bush said. "They ought to stand up and say, 'The tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used.' They ought to take their message to the people and say, 'Vote for me. I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program.'" But maybe the Democrats haven't said that because that isn't, in fact, what they believe. As Bush know, any number of Democrats and at least a handful of Republicans have said that government should continue to monitor the calls of suspected terrorists, but that it should either get warrants in the process, as current law requires, or change the law to make the president's program legal in the future.