That is probably illegal. Psy-ops are to be used only on "hostile foreign groups," and the military is explicitly banned from using propaganda campaigns on Americans. (Though everyone basically "knows" that the CIA and others perform psy-ops on the American people all the time, right? Or is that paranoid of me?)

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In his remarks to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush said that the Iraqi government was America's shield in the region against both of these forces of "Islamic extremism," and said of Maliki, "The prime minister of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, has courageously committed to pursue the forces of evil and destruction."

Bush was defending Maliki, even at the cost of implausibly depicting the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Islamic Call (al-Da'wa) Party as an opponent of Iran and Hezbollah, because the prime minister has been under virtual siege from Washington politicians for the past week and a half. He's become the favorite whipping boy of opponents of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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But one of the men most often mentioned as his replacement may have some of the same trouble with the truth. Since rumors of Gonzales' departure surfaced last week, speculation about his successor has centered on Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Just as Gonzales, under oath before Congress, failed to recall whether there was dissension within the Bush administration over a controversial war-on-terror-related policy, so Michael Chertoff seems to have suffered a similar lapse of memory while under oath before Congress when pressed on a different terror-related policy. Gonzales pleaded ignorance of a rift within the administration over warrantless wiretapping; Chertoff has denied knowledge of interrogation techniques that are tantamount to torture, despite regular attendance by his top aides at meetings on the subject.

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In a follow-up press conference call with reporters, Levin made it clear that his was no glass-half-full assessment. "The purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to ... give the opportunity to the Iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements," Levin said. "They have failed to do that. They have totally and utterly failed."

Fox News' headline on Levin's report? Think Progress caught it: "Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results."

Fox isn't alone. Searching for a story line -- and there's nothing better than an intraparty fight featuring flip-flopping politicians -- the mainstream media is playing up the notion that Democrats have gone soft on the "surge."

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In a joint statement released today, Republican Sen. John Warner and Democratic Sen. Carl Levin say meetings with Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and other U.S. and Iraqi officials left them "not optimistic" that Iraqis will make the political compromises that the "surge" is supposed to be making possible.

"In many meetings with Iraqi political leaders of all different backgrounds, we told them of the deep impatience of the American people and the Congress with the lack of political progress, impressed upon them that time has run out in that regard, and told them of the urgent need to make the essential compromises," Warner and Levin write. "In all of our meetings we witnessed a great deal of apprehension regarding the capabilities of the current Iraqi government to shed its sectarian biases and act in a unifying manner."

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The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush. "He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Jan. 24 about the "surge" tactic. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.'" She repeated his words: "'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

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The Associated Press says that Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John Warner have agreed on a measure that drops the harshest language from a resolution Levin introduced with Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel and drops wording in Warner's resolution that could have been read as suggesting that the Senate supported sending some additional U.S. troops to Iraq.

Combining forces, Levin and Warner have at least a chance of doing what neither could do without the other: attract the 60 votes necessary to survive a cloture vote forced by minority Republicans who want no anti-escalation resolution at all.

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The bad news about Robert Gates: Bush's nominee to replace Donald Rusmfeld doesn't seem to know, any better than any of his soon-to-be-colleagues in the Bush administration do, how the United States should proceed in Iraq now. "Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the United States will face a slowly and steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region or will face the very real risk of a regional conflagration," Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning.

Gates told the senators that "all options are on the table" for Iraq, but he wouldn't say which options he'll be advocating once he's confirmed.

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"Redeployment" is fast becoming the rallying cry for Democrats, who have new power in Congress and are getting fresh attention from the media. Obama was echoing several prominent Democrats who floated the word in last week's electoral afterglow, including new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid but starting with Sen. Carl Levin.

At a standing-room-only press conference in the Senate Radio-Television Gallery last Monday, Levin announced his priorities as incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The first priority would be to find a way forward to change the course in Iraq," Levin said. "Most Democrats share the view that we should pressure the White House to commence the phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq in four to six months." Levin told reporters that the centerpiece of the Democrats' plan for Iraq was to pass a resolution to start getting out of that war-torn country within half a year.

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It must have been a radical idea, this notion of drawing down troop levels this year. Only it wasn't. As we noted during the course of the debate, the plan put forth by Carl Levin and company wasn't so very different -- and was maybe even less dramatic -- from what the president's generals have sometimes proposed. Last August, for example, Newsweek reported that the Pentagon had drawn up a plan to reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq to the 40,000-60,000 range by the end of this year. That's not going to happen -- there are about 127,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now, not the 80,000 the Pentagon plan apparently envisioned -- but war planners are still hoping for a significant drawdown this year.

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But Miller's retirement plans have been put on hold due to a joint letter sent to the Army by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., the senior Democrat on the panel. Salon has learned that on Feb. 23 the two senators wrote Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey asking that Miller's retirement "be held in abeyance" until these two court-martial proceedings are completed.

The bipartisan Warner-Levin letter signals that Congress' anemic probe of abuse at Abu Ghraib might have a pulse after all. The topic has sparked little formal inquiry since an initial round of hearings were held during the spring of 2004, shortly after news accounts of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners aroused a public outcry. Miller, who had come to Iraq to help set up Abu Ghraib in late summer 2003 on a visit from running the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, last testified before Congress on the matter in May 2004.

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It turns out that was just the beginning.

This afternoon, the "current news" section of the White House Web site has exactly one item in it, and it's another one of these RNC-style talking-point memos called "Setting the Record Straight." The target this time: comments Michigan Sen. Carl Levin made this morning on CNN.

What did Levin say that was worthy of an official White House rebuke? That before the Iraq war began, George W. Bush and members of his administration blurred the lines between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida to such a degree that a majority of Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11.

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But was Harry Reid's parliamentary ploy more than just a one-day tactical victory? Maybe so. A report in the New York Times over the weekend suggests that the Democrats have new evidence that will prove useful in making the case that the administration played fast and loose with the facts in the march to war. A Defense Intelligence Agency report prepared in 2002 and released to the Times last week by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin shows that the Bush administration was warned that an al-Qaida official in U.S. custody was fabricating stories about an Iraq/al-Qaida connection before the administration began to use his claims as a basis for war.

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As the New York Times reports today, the Iraqi government has committed itself to adopting a new constitution by Aug. 15, but it has also allowed itself the possibility of a six-month extension, and it hasn't made much progress yet. Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, suggested Wednesday that the White House threaten the Iraq government with a major troop withdrawal if the country's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds and Sunnis can't make a deal on a constitution by February.

Levin acknowledged in an interview with the Times that the withdrawal of U.S. troops could create even greater chaos in Iraq. But it's a case, he said, where the devil we don't know might be less scary than the devil we do. "The status quo, we know, is violent," Levin said. "What may happen if we leave is uncertain."

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That's not to say that Senate Democrats supported the bill; many didn't. It is to say that they didn't want to get in the way. Maybe they believed that opposition was futile -- with Republicans in solid control of the Senate, the bill was going to pass regardless what the Democrats did -- or maybe they thought it best to let the Republicans engage in this macabre spectacle all by themselves. It was probably some of both, plus this: If Republicans were willing to go so far as to subpoena Terri Schiavo in order to keep anyone from letting her die, imagine what they'd be willing to do in a campaign commercial against a Senate Democrat who stood in their way. That's not an idle fear. As Senate Republicans worked the Schiavo case over the weekend, they had on their desks a memo reminding them that this is a "great political issue" for the GOP -- and one that might be used successfully against Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, who is up for re-election in 2006.

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The Senate rejected a measure by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that would have raised the fuel efficiency of American cars and trucks as much as 50 percent by 2015. Instead, it adopted an amendment by Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, a champion of the auto industry in Washington, and Missouri Republican Kit Bond. The Levin-Bond amendment essentially takes a wait-and-see approach, leaving any future decision on fuel economy standards, known as CAFE standards, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Auto industry lobbyists have long argued that raising the fuel efficiency standards would cost jobs and force compromises on car and truck safety. Their lobbying effort has been so effective that, until recently, the department had been barred by Congress from even studying fuel economy standards. The Levin-Bond proposal gives the department 15 to 24 months to suggest changes to the current standards. But environmental groups were not optimistic about the prospects for change.

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