Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down yesterday with the editors of the New York Daily News to discuss Iraq policy. She repeated most of the mantras we’ve come to expect from administration officials, including the obligatory sense of impatience.

“[O]ur patience is not endless — not just the patience of the American people but the patience of the administration.

“They’re hard issues, but they don’t have the luxury, really, of time.”

Top administration officials, including the president, say stuff like this all the time. Iraqis need to get better, faster. Our patience is limited. Ours is not an open-ended commitment.

The Bush gang really needs to change its rhetorical approach, because none of this makes any sense. Or more to the point, the rhetoric is entirely inconsistent with administration policy.

Bush’s approach to the war is predicated on the notion that our patience has to be endless. To do otherwise would be to leave before the job is done, which would mean, as the White House sees it, the decline of Western civilization. If our patience is limited, we might abandon Iraq, leaving terrorists to fill a power vacuum that will endanger the world.

Rice added that Iraqis don’t have the “luxury” of time. This echoes the recent comments of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who insisted, “The clock is ticking.” This, too, sounds nice, but contradicts the war strategy. As the administration sees it, if Iraqis are given a finite amount of time, the “suiciders” and “dead-enders” will think we’ll eventually leave, and they’ll “wait us out.”

Put it this way: it’s not helpful for Rice to suggest time is of the essence when the rest of the administration is talking about the “Korean model” in which the U.S. will maintain a presence in Iraq for the next five decades.

Take a wild guess who shared these words of wisdom during a recent commencement address (via Jonathan Schwarz):

“While it’s wonderful to have the world literally at our fingertips, the tsunami of information at our beck and call has the potential to drown us and actually make us less informed…. Surfing the web may be fast and fun, but sometimes pursuing knowledge requires you to go in the deep end — and not just dip your toe in the shallow water. […]

“The proliferation of celebrity magazines makes Lindsey Lohan’s latest stint in rehab seem more important than what’s happening in Darfur.

The kind of fluff that accosts us on the newsstand may seem like harmless fun, but it should also come with a warning label that says it can rot your mind and distort your values.”

The words of Al Gore? Bill Moyers? Eric Alterman?

Try Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News, who would appear to have some power over how the mind-rotting fluff is reported to a national audience.

I have to say, Couric’s remarks at Williams College last week sound encouraging, but they would be far less breathtaking if they matched her journalism. On Thursday night, the CBS Evening News’ top story was Bush and Putin discussing missile defense, to which the network devoted two minutes and 35 seconds. The next longest item was Paris Hilton’s release from jail, which garnered two minutes and 25 seconds.

During the half-hour broadcast, the Paris Hilton “news” got more coverage on CBS than a roadside bomb killing a U.S. soldier, the immigration legislation, and passage of the stem-cell bill combined — times two.

Please tell us again, Katie, about how the media exaggerates the significance of celebrity nonsense.

Just two weeks ago, U.S. News reported on how happy presidential aides were for a change. After having a rough time, Bush’s West Wing finally believed they’d turned a corner and were optimistic about the future.

Relieved White House officials say President Bush has finally broken the cycle of bad news and political setbacks he has endured for months.

The officials say the bipartisan agreement on immigration…is seen as a sign that times will get better for Bush as he pursues his second-term agenda. “Immigration cleared the air,” a senior White House official told U.S. News.

Oops.

As Jim Rutenberg noted today, in case there was any doubt, the lame-duck period has officially begun.

[E]arly euphoria only made the grand bargain’s grand collapse on Thursday night all the more of a blow, pointing up a stubbornly unshakable dynamic for President Bush in the final 19 months of his term: With low approval ratings and the race to succeed him well under way, his ability to push his agenda has faded to the point where he can fairly be judged to have entered his lame duck period. […]

Rich Bond, a former Republican Party chairman and deputy White House chief of staff for Mr. Bush’s father, said of the president, “He’s in a greatly weakened state, and he’s playing the best hand he can.”

Which isn’t saying much. On immigration, the president couldn’t rally support from members of his own party, a failure which ultimately did the legislation in. In case there was any doubt, Bush’s reservoir of “political capital” is now empty. The immigration bill was the one major, sweeping policy area in which the White House and congressional Democratic leaders are at least near the same page. With this legislation falling apart, Bush appears to have lost his only shot at scoring a major legislative victory in the 110th Congress — and he won’t be president for the 111th.

Bush can thump his chest and declare “I am the president!” as much as he wants, but that won’t change the political reality. If he looks like a lame duck, and he quacks like a lame duck….

Republican Presidential candidates and GOP officials battle it out over stalled immigration bill. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup.

Rep. Zack Wamp (R-Tenn.), one of Fred Thompson’s boosters on the Hill, recently suggested the actor/senator/lobbyist would make a good president, in part because of his speaking voice.

“He has a commanding voice,” Wamp said. “He has a commanding presence. He makes people feel secure. He makes us feel confident.”

Sen. George “Macaca” Allen (remember him?) apparently feels the same way. (via Steve M.)

Former Sen. George Allen is bullish about former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, the actor who hasn’t even gotten into the 2008 presidential race yet.

Thompson has the right philosophy, is articulate, has a record and is “the best voice in America,” Allen, a Virginia Republican, told a lecture series audience yesterday.

He likened Thompson’s voice to that of a “modern-day Rex Allen,” drawing a reference to a now-deceased cowboy actor.

It’s good to know substantive qualities weigh heavily on the minds of GOP leaders.

On a related note, interest in Mitt Romney’s appearance is apparently still high among conservative political observers, with the Politico’s Roger Simon applauding Romney for having “shoulders you could land a 737 on.”

This, of course, follows Bill O’Reilly praising Romney’s jaw and hair, and NewsMax celebrating the former Massachusetts governor’s “sensational good looks.”

The moral of the story: if a Republican candidate looked like Romney and sounded like Thompson, they could call off the primaries and give the guy the nomination. They might be tempted to ask this amalgamation a few questions about issues, but why bother?

From the president’s press conference this morning in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Prodi:

Q: And the deadline for the Kosovo independence —

BUSH: What? Say that again?

Q Deadline for the Kosovo independence?

BUSH: A decline?

Q Deadline, deadline.

BUSH: Deadline. Beg your pardon. My English isn’t very good. (emphasis added)

He said it; not me.

For a while, part of the administration’s war policy in Iraq was disarming sectarian militias. Now, U.S. forces are trying a different tack — the opposite tack.

The worst month of Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl’s deployment in western Baghdad was finally drawing to a close. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq had unleashed bombings that killed 14 of his soldiers in May, a shocking escalation of violence for a battalion that had lost three soldiers in the previous six months while patrolling the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah. On top of that, the 41-year-old battalion commander was doubled up with a stomach flu when, late on May 29, he received a cellphone call that would change everything.

“We’re going after al-Qaeda,” a leading local imam said, Kuehl recalled. “What we want you to do is stay out of the way.”

“Sheik, I can’t do that. I can’t just leave Amiriyah and let you go at it.”

“Well, we’re going to go.”

The week that followed revolutionized Kuehl’s approach to fighting the insurgency and serves as a vivid example of a risky, and expanding, new American strategy of looking beyond the Iraqi police and army for help in controlling violent neighborhoods.

Apparently, U.S. forces have not only aligned themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen, we’re also now cooperating with sectarian militias, working outside the Iraqi security forces, that include insurgents that have attacked Americans in the past. What’s more, we’re allowing them to procure weapons and we’re granting them the power to arrest other Iraqis.

“We have made a deal with the devil,” said an intelligence officer in the battalion.

The dynamic is not without complications. Joshua Partlow’s report explained that “fighters on both sides appeared nearly identical,” using the same weapons and wearing similar clothes. “Now we’ve got kind of a mess on our hands,” a leader of a U.S. Stryker team remembered thinking. “Because we’ve got a lot of armed guys running all over the place, and it’s making it very hard for us to identify which side is which.”

Might these militias turn on the U.S. sometime soon? No one knows. Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, a Sunni militia leader said, “Let’s be honest, the enemy now is not the Americans, for the time being.” (emphasis added)

What could possibly go wrong?

Emptywheel discovered a striking footnote in the court order Judge Reggie Walton issued allowing Scooter Libby’s powerful legal friends — 12 top-shelf lawyers, including Robert Bork — to issue briefs on Libby’s behalf.

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant.

The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it. (emphasis added)

Ouch. Sarcasm becomes you, Judge Walton.

Let’s also not forget, my conservative friends, that Walton was a Bush appointee, nominated for his no-nonsense style.

Fouad Ajami wrote a startling op-ed for the Wall Street Journal yesterday, imploring the president not to leave a “fallen soldier” behind. If Ajami were addressing actual soldiers, his piece might have even been compelling.

In “The Soldier’s Creed,” there is a particularly compelling principle: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” This is a cherished belief, and it has been so since soldiers and chroniclers and philosophers thought about wars and great, common endeavors. Across time and space, cultures, each in its own way, have given voice to this most basic of beliefs. They have done it, we know, to give heart to those who embark on a common mission, to give them confidence that they will not be given up under duress.

Alas, Ajami wasn’t referring to a serviceman or woman; he was writing about Scooter Libby.

Scooter Libby was a soldier in your — our — war in Iraq…. Scooter Libby was there for the beginning of that campaign. He can’t be left behind as a casualty of a war our country had once proudly claimed as its own.

So, as far as Ajami is concerned, it’s entirely legitimate to compare a convicted felon who lied about leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent in a time of war to those who actually wear the uniform and serve in Iraq.

Ajami adds that the Libby case “has been, from the start, about the Iraq war and its legitimacy.” To which my friend Anonymous Liberal responded, “What planet does this guy live on? Scooter Libby is not and was not a soldier in anything. He was a public official who was intimately involved in the events that led to the outing of an undercover CIA officer. That’s what Fitzgerald was investigating, not the war in Iraq or anything remotely related to the war in Iraq. And Libby lied and obstructed that investigation, crimes for which he was convicted beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers.”

For all the recent talk about “amnesty,” it’s interesting to see just how many White House allies want Scooter Libby to face no penalty for his crimes, isn’t it?

In her column today, Maureen Dowd asks a reasonable question.

Be honest. Who would you rather share a foxhole with: a gay soldier or Mitt Romney?

A gay soldier, of course. In a dicey situation like that, you need someone steadfast who knows who he is and what he believes, even if he’s not allowed to say it out loud.

Hmm, a patriotic young American willing to put his or her life on the line in service to the United States, or a presidential candidate who avoided military service and still has no idea whether U.N. weapons inspectors were allowed entry into Iraq in 2003? In a military crisis, who do I trust?

It really isn’t a tough call.