We should never allow ourselves to get used to the idea that our President, the man who commands our armed forces and deploys our diplomats, has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
That's why it's worth dwelling on the speech he gave yesterday. It was an absolutely appalling mishmash of error, illogic, and slander. Admittedly, it's a little hard to get your hands around: as Josh Marshall said, "To get a grasp on an argument, to support it or take it apart, requires that it have some grounding in reality or actual fact." Bush's speech had no such grounding: it was a sort of free-floating fantasy whose only discernible connection to the actual world was in its lethal effects. Still, it's worth trying to understand. I do my best below the fold.
I give this one a gold star, as much as a proxy for hilzoy's writing in general as for this article, which is quite exceptional.
