I find this (from today's New York Times) very disturbing:

The weekend of violence — which included the deaths of eight American soldiers in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City — did not appear to touch off crisis meetings in Washington. The president was campaigning and throwing out the first pitch at an opening-day game in St. Louis. His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was preparing for testimony on Thursday before the commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks. One of her chief advisers on Iraq strategy was in Baghdad. One official said there were "many conference calls, but no big decisions."

Reading this alongside Billmon's remarkable collection of cheery recent news releases on Iraq from the CPA, Centcom, and the White House, and alongside "A Soldier Assures Us: Our Progress Is Amazing," which appears in today's Houston Chronicle and was clearly written for the benefit of the White House (the Chronicle tells us that the soldier is also "an adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think-tank"), I realize: This isn't just propaganda anymore.

It's pathology.

Bush may not be drinking anymore, but in Iraq he's lost control the way an alcoholic loses control -- and, like an alcoholic, his administration is insisting on family allegiance to the myth that nothing's wrong: Everything is fine, and no backtalk from you.