So I couldn't stand dialup, so I am now on T-Mobile Hotspot. Goes on my cellphone bill so my company pays it. But I am still going to read!

Looks like Patrick Ruffini is on top of the rapid response for the web with the Bush campaign. Instapundit links to a David Warren column, which asks:

The question on my mind is thus, will the Americans funk out? And the only thing I can say for sure, is that if they do, it will be an unparalleled disaster. For 9/11 itself was the payback for the last U.S. funk-out from its responsibilities as a superpower.

In my post below, I point out that President Bush is shown to be full of resolve in Woodward's Bush at War. He won't funk out. But back to Patrick. He let's us know that the President's resolve is not flagging - from a speech today at the American Legion:

The work of our coalition in Iraq goes on because that country is now a point of testing in the war on terror. The remnants of Saddam's regime are still dangerous, and terrorists are gathering in Iraq to undermine the advance of freedom. Al Qaeda and the other global terror networks recognize that the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime is a defeat for them. They know that a democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would be a further defeat for their ideology of terror. They know that the spread of peace and hope in the Middle East would undermine the appeal of bitterness, resentment, and violence. And the more progress we make in Iraq, the more desperate the terrorists will become. Freedom is a threat to their way of life. (Applause.)

They have sabotaged water mains and oil pipelines, and attacked local police. Last week, they killed aid workers bringing food and medicine to the country. The terrorists have killed innocent Iraqis and Americans and U.N. officials from many nations. They have declared war on the entire civilized world, and the civilized world will not be intimidated. (Applause.)

Retreat in the face of terror would only invite further and bolder attacks. There will be no retreat. (Applause.)

Warren also makes this note - "the Bush administration has decided to leave the whole month to its enemies." At least Patrick is on the case. Now if he can only get the message to the rest of the message crew in the Bush adminstration, we might have actually heard some of that speech. (Read the whole thing, as they say.)

UPDATE: Only Patrick Ruffini's work in a roundabout way. Actually, the word went out from blogsforbush.com, which has a placeholder website that is chock full of the blog goodies that Patrick provided through GeorgeWBush.com.

I hate it. I hate blogging on it. But, it has kept me out of blogworld and into some offline stuff. That's one problem with the blogosphere, if you can't link to it, it doesn't exist.

So some stuff I read that I can't excerpt or link to. First of all, from the print Wall Street Journal. A story on the self-imposed exile of 11 Democrat Texas state senators to thwart a vote on redistricting. Some interesting tidbits popped up. Like the cost of the hotel rooms that these senators are lodged in is coming out of their own pocket. Or out of campaign funds. That hardly seems fair. Why should a politician get to pay for a hotel room for their own personal use, not for campaign use, out of campaign funds? I know that sometimes politicians use campaign funds to pay off women who accuse them of things, or to pay for lawyers to defend against those accusations - again, that hardly seems fair. Why doesn't campaign finance reform restrict use of campaign funds to, oh, I don't know, campaigns? And why, if the people who give the money have to be disclosed, doesn't the campaign spending also have to be disclosed?

Also, the taxpayers of New Mexico are bearing some expense for this, too. New Mexico, solidly Democrat (Bill Richardson is governor), has assigned a State Trooper to guard these errant senators full-time in case the Texas Rangers attempted to come get them to attend their session.

Next off-line resource. I just finished Bob Woodward's Bush at War, which focuses on the War in Afghanistan. This is a must read. Okay, its Woodward, and I probably have to agree with a review I read, don't remember where, that Woodward is kind to those who are more willing sources, and unkind to those who are less willing. Supposedly, Colin Powell and George Tenet were the most cooperative with this book, and if kindness of treatment is a measure, then so was Condoleeza Rice. Rumsfeld was obviously less cooperative. Same with Cheney.

I don't know if the following would be considered spoilers, because it is a kind of contemporaneous history book, and the history has passed. But here's my take on it, too informal to be a review. First, there are some bits that seem to be fed to Woodward to counter some specific criticisms. More than once, Tenet is praised for having done considerable investment in HUMINT (human intelligence), which is often something that the CIA is criticized for not having enough of. More than once, Colin Powell is seen as the cool head who suggests something once, twice, and third time around, everyone else comes around to see the wisdom of his ways. The press is vindicated in its assessment of the war in Afghanistan as a quagmire because it was a quagmire.

Could be all true, I guess, but at the beginning of the book, Woodward does say he attributes thoughts to people that he may not have gotten directly from them. Tenet is the real designer of the Afghan war, and Rumsfeld reluctant or wishy-washy.

And then it all comes to a close, surprising everyone. Except for a guy named Cofer Black, who, if Woodward records him correctly, is on my hero list.

Someone who is treated ambivalently by Woodward is the President, who agreed to 2 separate interviews with Woodward, and who had evidently authorized his participation in the documentation of these events. There a couple of questions where Woodward is pointedly hostile to the President while questioning him. But one thing is eminently clear - this war was fought the way it was, and won the way it was, because of George W. Bush. It might have been Tenet's (or Black's) plan, and executed by the agencies and the men and women on the ground and in the air, but quite clearly, the driving force, and force for success, is President Bush. You can see the same determination there foreshadowed for Iraq.

"We shall not tire, we shall not falter, we shall not fail" is not mere rhetoric for the President. And we should be thankful for that.

I hear at times that it didn't matter who was President on 9/11, that anyone in that office would react the same way. I agree that any President would have to react in the defense of the US after such an attack. But I think anyone who thinks that the person doesn't matter should read this book. I don't think they will continue to believe it.

There is some talk that in coming days GEN Clark is going to become the tenth Democratic candidate. I am predicting right now that he won't.

There are all the practical reasons - he's a political newcomer, doesn't have a team, and would be behind even Carol-Moseley Braun in fundraising. But the real reason that I am predicting that he won't is that he renounced, or "clarified," his statement that people from, or "around" the White House had pressured him to finger Iraq in 9/11. That could have been a pretty powerful arrow in his quiver - they wanted me to lie, but I wouldn't. Instead he decided to own up to the truth himself.

Kinda. Here is what he said on Meet the Press:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

And this is how he clarifies it:

I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on ''Meet the Press,'' quoted in Paul Krugman's July 15 column, about ''people around the White House'' seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein.

I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.

Perfectly Clintonian. But I think he (and his backers) are fanning the flames now in order to prepare for something in the future.

Travelling for the next couple of weeks. Right now posting from a dialup connection on a P133 with Windows 95 and IE 4.0. I forgot how badly 95 sucked. Sitemeter locks up IE, and the machine has to be rebooted. But I still like Microsoft, and it still isn't my virus, for all you Googler's who have shown up at my door.

Anyway, interesting to me that the UN gets blown up, and the question isn't "what did they do to deserve it," but rather, "wow, there are bad people in Iraq."

There's an NYT article today (may require registration) about Rummy's plans to get more troops in the business of terrorist killing.

John Geoghan, pedophile, killed in prison. I think some bishops and cardinals are going to be worried. Better go state's evidence, cut a deal to keep you out of the big house.

Boston's Big Dig. What a boondoggle. When they hold the Democratic convention here, they should make all of the delegates and politicians drive around the city once or twice, and put up billboards reading "Brought to you by the Ted Kennedy and the unions."