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'I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.'  - Bush to key Republicans according to Bob Woodward in his book "State of Denial".

Here's an interesting take on American ambivalence about Iraq by Shelby Steele in the Wall Street Journal .

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Having already banned smoking, NYC Health Nazis did Ohio's Storm Troopers one better. They criminalized trans fats.

Next time you fly to LaGuardia strike a blow for freedom.  Pack a bag of fries in your carry-on.

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Colin Powell told Bush an invasion of Iraq would be under Pottery Barn rules: you break it you own it.  It turns out Pottery Barn has no such rule.  It probably doesn't have wmd either.

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The Ohio ban on public smoking took effect yesterday.  The law permitting concealed weapons is already in place. 

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Jim Baker has advised President Bush on asking Iraqis to carry the load before. In 1991 Bush 41 encouraged the Iraqi Shiites to overthrow Saddam Hussein.  They took him up on it and when Saddam responded with helicopter gunships the Americans refused their pleas for help.  100,000 Shiites were killed.

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John Bolton resigned his recess appointment as U.N. Ambassador.  Senator George Voinovich was disappointed.

"Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a member of
the Foreign Relations Committee, said today: “I am very disappointed
that John Bolton will not continue in his role as ambassador to the
United Nations. Given the fragile nature of the world situation, and
the critical task of reforming the U.N., he should have been given an
up-or-down vote on the Senate floor."

Voinovich even wrote a column for the Washington Post on July 20 titled Why I'll vote for John Bolton.  That was after he said he'd vote against him.

"Standing before the Senate chamber in May 2005,
Senator George Voinovich made a tearful, heartfelt plea to his
colleagues, urging them to vote against confirming John Bolton as U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. “I came back here [to the Senate] and
ran for a second term because I'm worried about my kids and my
grandchildren,…”

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James Baker's study group leaked its homework.

The bipartisan Iraq
Study Group plans to recommend withdrawing nearly all U.S. combat units
from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving behind troops to train, advise
and support the Iraqis, setting the first goal for a major drawdown of
U.S. forces, sources familiar with the proposal said yesterday.

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The pope visited St. Sophia's Cathedral while he was in Turkey trying to make nice with the Muslims. The Cathedral is an empty museum.

Secular Turks want to join the European Union but the Islamic population is still miffed over a speech last September where "Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor, who said that Islam was violent and irrational."

According to the NY Times that speech was really about  empty churches in the West.

"But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech,
and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science
and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the
secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s
worries."

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Matt Lauer, on the NBC Today show, declared the unpleasantness in Iraq to be a Civil War.  He said two clearly defined groups within a country using violence to achieve political supremacy a Civil War makes.

NBC military analyst, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, backed him up agreeing the Sunnis are a group, so are the Shia, and they are using violence.

National Security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday that things are going according to al Qaeda's plans.

"Zarqawi articulated very early on a strategy for provoking sectarian violence
by attacking Shi'a so they, in turn, would attack Sunni. This was part
of their strategy to sow chaos, to thwart the advance of democracy and
make Iraq a safe haven for terror."

So the Bush argument that it's not a civil war, seems to be that it's still a war against al Qaeda and we're losing.