Statesman?

Susan Stamberg on Morning Edition today describes the North Korea nuclear test as "the latest foreign policy challenge for the President who’s also trying to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons technology and trying to manage a war in Iraq that remains bloody and unpopular." Excuse me? Latest challenge? Manage a war? This is just too kind. The N. Korea test is clearly another botched failure from one of the most ignorant and arrogant occupants of the White House that the US has had. And the war in Iraq is not just bloody and unpopular--it is illegal, corrupt, ill-advised, poorly planned, based on lies, destabilizing, murderous, etc.

And then NPR turns to George Edwards, who has remarkable credentials as a presidential scholar, but who laughably says that, regarding North Korea, Bush "may have a chance to improve his image as a statesman." That's rich.