(1) Tuesday, Bush said this:

Mr. Zarqawi and al Qaeda, the very same people that attacked the United States, have made it clear that they want to drive us out of Iraq so they can plan, plot, and attack America again.

This is just one of the many many things that Bush says that just floats across the screen into our living rooms, and a significant portion of the population hears it and nods in agreement.

But it’s total B.S.

First of all, "Mr. Zarqawi" was not one of the "people that attacked the United States".  He simply wasn’t.

Second of all, the notion that our presence in Iraq is somehow preventing plans to attack America here at home is silly.  Worse than that, it’s a dangerous mindset, because it assumes — with absolutely no basis in logic or fact — that al Qaeda is incapable of doing two things at once.   Does anyone in their right mind think that the long tentacles of al Qaeda can’t do both things — fight us in Iraq and plot an attack on the U.S. mainland — at the same time?

After all, the war in Iraq didn’t stop AQ from taking neraly 200 lives in Spain two years ago, right?

(2)  Yesterday, Bush said:

We’re making good progress, we really are, in parts of the world. Afghanistan has now got a constitution which talks about freedom of religion and talks about women’s rights.

Really?  Freedom of religion in Afghanistan?  A man named Abdul Rahman has been put on trial for converting to Christianity. For this "crime", he could be put to death.

Not surprising . . . or new.  Back in 2003, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote that Afghanistan’s constitution:

subordinates to ordinary legislation most basic individual rights, including rights to life and the freedoms of expression and association. The rights provisions are thus non-binding aspirations that may be displaced by ordinary enactments of legislative bodies.

mandates that all legislation must conform to the religion of Islam, enshrining the supremacy of Islamic law even over the individual rights provisions in the constitution.

fails to include a specific guarantee for individual rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to both of which Afghanistan is party.

threatens to create a judicial theocracy where judges who are unrestrained by checks and balances of other branches of government, have the ultimate authority to determine the conformity of enacted laws with Islam and must apply specific schools of Islamic jurisprudence when no provision of law addresses an issue before them. This would allow for a religious orthodoxy to be officially imposed, stifling dissent within the Islamic tradition.

What planet is Bush living on?