A new Washington Post-ABC News poll has George W. Bush's approval rating at 45 percent, the lowest point the poll has recorded for his presidency. Some of that's due to the soaring price of gasoline -- something that's going to get worse, not better, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- and some of it's the war.

We don't remember too much from junior high mathematics, but we recall something about how you can multiply two negatives and come up with a positive. Maybe that's what Bush was trying to do yesterday when, during a speech in California, he came up with a whole new justification for the war in Iraq: It's about the oil.

Bush says that we've got to keep fighting in Iraq to keep the nation's oil supplies from falling into the wrong hands. "If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition," the president said.