Rove probably had pictures of the two Nesweek ”reporters” responsible for this abomination of invidious Rethuglican rebranding, Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas, pleasuring farm animals or little boys.  How else to account for this three-page pack of pro-Bush LIES?  From “‘I’m So Sorry’”:

Bush likes to play the resolute War Leader, and he has never been known for admitting mistakes or regret. But that does not mean that he is free of doubt. For the past three years, Bush has been living in two worlds—unwavering and confident in public, but sometimes stricken in private. Bush’s meetings with widows like Crystal Owen offer a rare look inside that inner, private world.

Last week, at his ranch in Texas, he took his usual line on Iraq, telling reporters that the United States would not pull out its troops until Iraq was able to defend itself. While he said he “sympathized” with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, he refused to visit her peace vigil, set up in a tent in a drainage ditch outside the ranch, and sent two of his aides to talk to her instead.

Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The conversations are closed to the press, and Bush does not like to talk about what goes on in these grieving sessions, though there have been hints. An hour after he met with the families at Fort Bragg in June, he gave a hard-line speech on national TV. When he mentioned the sacrifice of military families, his lips visibly quivered.

[…] All war presidents find ways to deal with the strain of sending soldiers off to die. During the Vietnam War, LBJ used to pray after midnight with Roman Catholic monks. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, prayed with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on the eve of the first gulf war. For George W. Bush, these private audiences with the families of dead soldiers and Marines seem to be an outlet of sorts. (They are perhaps harder for Laura, who sometimes accompanies Bush and looks devastated afterward.) Family members interviewed by Newseek say they have been taken aback by the president’s emotionalism and his sincerity. More complicated is the question of whether Bush’s suffering is essentially sympathetic, or whether he is agonizing over the war that he chose to start.

Bush routinely asks to see the families of the fallen when he visits military bases, which he does about 10 times a year. It does not appear that the White House or the military makes any effort to screen out dissenters or embittered families, though some families decline the invitation to meet with Bush. Most families encourage the president to stay the course in Iraq. “To oppose something my husband lost his life for would be a betrayal,” says Inge Colton, whose husband, Shane, died in April 2004 when his Apache helicopter was shot down over Baghdad. Bush does, however, hear plenty of complaints. He has been asked about missing medals on the returned uniform of a loved one, about financial assistance for a child going to college and about how soldiers really died when the Pentagon claimed the details were classified.

At her meeting with the president at Fort Hood, Texas, last spring, Colton says she lit into Bush for “stingy” military benefits. Her complaints caught Bush “a little off guard,” she recalls. “He tried to argue with me a little bit, but he promised he would have someone look into it.” The next day she got a call from White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who said the White House would follow up. “My main goal was to have him look at my son, look him in the eyes and apologize,” says Colton. “I wanted him to know, to really understand who he has hurt.” She says Bush was “attentive, though not in a fake way,” and sometimes at a loss for words. “He didn’t try to overcompensate,” she says.

The most telling—and moving—picture of Bush grieving with the families of the dead was provided by Rachel Ascione, who met with him last summer. Her older brother, Ron Payne, was a Marine who had been killed in Afghanistan only a few weeks before Ascione was invited to meet with Bush at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Fla.

Ascione wasn’t sure she could restrain herself with the president. She was feeling “raw.” “I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me why my brother was never coming back, and I wanted him to know it was his fault that my heart was broken,” she recalls. The president was coming to Florida, a key swing state, in the middle of his re-election campaign. Ascione was worried that her family would be “exploited” by a “phony effort to make good with people in order to get votes.”

Ascione and her family were gathered with 18 other families in a large room on the air base. The president entered with some Secret Service agents, a military entourage and a White House photographer. “I’m here for you, and I will take as much time as you need,” Bush said. He began moving from family to family. Ascione watched as mothers confronted him: “How could you let this happen? Why is my son gone?” one asked. Ascione couldn’t hear his answer, but soon “she began to sob, and he began crying, too. And then he just hugged her tight, and they cried together for what seemed like forever.”

Ha!  NONSENSE!  TRITE EMOTIONALISM!

How do I know?  BECAUSE CINDY TOLD ME SO!—on CNN, August 7:

It was—you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey.

He wouldn’t look at the pictures of Casey. He didn’t even know Casey’s name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, “So who are we honoring here?” He didn’t even know Casey’s name. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn’t even call him “him” or “he.” He called him “your loved one.”

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party [my emphasis]

And because I now know the TRUTH, the efforts of the Rovian spin machine to paint the President as anything less than the CACKLING, DEATH-CELEBRATING monster he is will fail—will prostrate itself, ultimately, before the collected OUTRAGE of the good and righteous CINDYPHILES, who just want Bush to answer some questions!

WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF THE DIALOGUE, DEATHMERCHANT?

As Billmon so eloquently explains it:

The machine can try to demonize Cindy Sheehan. But it can’t demonize those questions [about why he murdered her son, why we are in Iraq, why he hasn’t sent his own trustfund spawn that they claim to have answered]—not any more, not when so many others are asking them. Here in the dog days of August, it appears the rabid curs of the authoritarian right have finally met their match, in the form of a middle-aged woman in a sunhat, holding in her hand the metaphorical equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper for wacking bad little GOP doggies (and presidents) on the nose.

FIRST CRAWFORD!  THEN ONWARD, TO JERUSALEM!

Remember:  we must bring our soldiers home.  So that they can prepare themselves for the coming Caliphate…

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Others commenting:  Michelle Malkin, The Anchoress, Lorie Byrd and Polipundit (Lorie parses Newsweek’s language and highlights some unsavory subtext), Jack Kelly, Judith Weiss, Bill Faith, Betsy Newmark, Sister Toldjah, Michael King,