More Proof The Truth And President Bush Have Never Been in the Same Zip Code Together

From Steve at The Carpetbagger Report on today's just peachy Bush Rose Garden press conference, in a piece he appropriately called, "Fun with Fact-Checking!":

Following up on an earlier item, I watched the president's press conference this morning and jotted down a quick note every time I heard him say something that I knew to be false. Needless to say, I went through more than a couple of sheets of paper.

* On the issue of military tribunals, Bush said, "We will work with members of both parties to get legislation that works out of the Congress."

That's not quite right. First, the White House isn't interested in working with congressional Dems at all, and second, the proposals with bi-partisan support are staunchly opposed by the president.

* In describing his concerns about Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, Bush said, "Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague.

What does that mean, 'outrages upon human dignity'? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation."

Somehow, American presidents seemed to function just fine with the same interpretation for the last 60 years. Besides, the judge advocate general of the Army recently said, "[W]e've been training to that standard and living to that standard since the beginning of our Army, and we continue to do so." To hear Bush tell it, the standard doesn't even exist. Apparently, only he and his sycophants agree.

* Asked how he measures progress in Iraq with all the death and destruction, the president said, "Well, one way you do it is you measure progress based upon the resilience of the Iraqi people."

This was my personal favorite of the day. Apparently, we're no longer looking at progress in the war by indicators that we can actually measure (casualties, oil production, terrorist attacks, etc.), but instead by the amorphous concept of "resilience." Now all we need is a resilience-o-meter and we'll have some valuable data to consider.