The New York Times calls it “an impassioned defense.”

Looks more like a rambling, incoherent, and entirely unconvincing attempt to evade a question to me:

(via C&L)

Bush’s tone during this press conference has been well-limned by Ezra (who deems him “furious”), Digby (who calls him “angry and petulant”), and Barbara (who writes that he is “wound a little too tight”).

But what strikes me even more than Bush’s typical peevishness is his complete inability to grasp even the basic substance of David Gregory’s simple question, which boiled down to this: Do you agree to allow other countries to treat American soldiers in the way that you have treated, and propose to treat, enemy combatants?

It was a question that asked Bush to step outside himself, to view himself and his country from another perspective. And we all know that this is something that he is almost constitutionally incapable of doing. That rigidity has been, indeed, the only thing that has allowed him to maintain his belief in himself and in his self-appointed mission, despite the objections of much of the world. Like a horse wearing blinders at a racetrack, he can look neither to the side nor behind him, but only straight ahead, to the path directly in front of him. He has come to believe that that path is the only path; and why wouldn’t he, when he can see no other?

It seems to me that the only possible retort to Gregory’s question would have been an assertion of American exceptionalism, based on a claim of its inherent moral superiority: we should be allowed to treat others worse than we wish to be treated ourselves because our values are superior to those of other countries.

But that moral superiority was shredded when the Bush Administration did away with the Geneva conventions. We can no longer condemn other countries for torturing people because we now torture people. We can no longer condemn the unfair treatment of prisoners by brutal dictatorships because we have proved ourselves worthy of comparison to the worst despots.

And so Bush is left to stammer and steam and evade, and to practice, in spectacularly half-assed fashion, every known debate trick in the book as he tries to avoid the question before him.

But none of those tricks worked, and the fact is that if you look at what he actually said, rather than what The New York Times wants to interpret him as having said, it was, as Barbara noted, that “the world would be a better place if enemies who capture U.S. soldiers could torture them, try them on secret evidence, and execute them.” [that quote is Barbara’s, not GWB’s]

I’m sure that will bring great comfort to our soldiers serving overseas.

Update: More from Billmon (via Susie), who hits on the loss of moral superiority I was trying to get at above:

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