One the one hand, this is another contribution to M Massino’s gleaming pile of mixed metaphors (although I guess it’s really more of an abandoned metaphor, since we get one “hand” and then just a second “part”).

On the other, it’s a highlight from President Bush’s tele-conversation with the troops in Iraq this morning. If C Bush correctly identified the staggering, world-changing lies of the administration as likely candidates for number 1 on the top 10 list of reasons to regret Bush’s election, later in the conversation there’s something I’d like to see somewhere in the top 250:

When Bush says “interesting” and “Saddam” near each other, he means to be clever. As in:

Interesting.

(Incidentally, the last time the White House has an official record of Bush talking about "stomping grounds," he was referring to the Reagan administration stomping around the White House:

For Bush, leaders stomp.)

As far as one can tell, “interesting,” means “revelatory of my domination of Saddam Hussein.” (In a fashion similar to the way in which “Darth” means “In.”)

I find it interesting, but in a different way that our President means it, that the White House is having some trouble slipping propaganda past a mainstream media that has, over the past few years, pursued stories with the vigor of a yellowjacket in a 40-degree chill.

Later in the day, at the White House press briefing, the reporters were pelting the press secretary with questions like this one, which started the briefing:

Perhaps more surprising is the AP article which followed, getting wide circulation (online at least). The story – accompanied through affiliated outlets by video from ABC News – emphasizes the rehearsal of questions and responses in a way that undercuts not so much the basic truth of the ideas passed back and forth as the status of the event itself. Like revealing that “Amazing Discoveries” isn’t a real TV show, but just an invention of the infomercial.

It stands to reason, then, that the most damaging revelation, would concern the key moment in the teleconference least dependent on a question of fact:

Knowing that Sergeant Lombardo “looked familiar” from the rehearsal of the teleconference rather than Bush’s triumphant-in-defeat moment with the bullhorn in NYC does sort of take some of the punch out of that moment of 9/11 = Iraq War magic. (So, perhaps does Sgt. Lombardo’s slip about New York, which seems to indicate momentarily that either a) we are fighting them “here” rather than "there," after all (There’s fighting in the Adirondacks?) or b) a heretofore unknown annexation has just handed Gov. Pataki a bigger problem than the state budget.)

It is as if the media slip-up of leaving the cameras rolling during the rehearsal creates the occasion for some critical response to the message itself – a condition that seems to testify to the hyper-self-conscious narcissism of the Washington news media. And, it’s no doubt true that the story disrupts the President’s aura only after it's been pretty well disrupted.

But, as long as the President’s still using soldiers to try to make real a lie about Iraq and 9/11 that the administration has supposedly sworn off telling, I suppose we should be glad for any occasion on which the press shows some signs of life.