Sunday Roundup

The lowlight of the week was the willfully-deceptive speech the president delivered on Tuesday, in which he sought to justify our ongoing involvement in Iraq by claiming, for what seemed like the 10,000th time, that if we weren't in Iraq, those we are fighting there would be attacking us "on the streets of our own cities." It's an argument Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, labeled "completely disingenuous" and "fundamentally misleading." During the 28-minute speech, the president mentioned al-Qaeda 95 times, but conveniently skipped over the fact that the murderous organization is back to its pre-9/11 strength -- and ensconced in Pakistan -- precisely because he traded an all-out effort to get bin Laden for deposing Saddam Hussein and a disastrous occupation to be named later.