When Condi Rice favorably compared the disastrous U.S. occupation of Iraq to the American Civil War and somehow extrapolated that Abraham Lincoln also blew up 50,000 Iraqis, we just assumed it was the usual nonsense from the crazy lady.

But a weird new study proves Rice is actually half-right about something for a change.

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“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
-New York Times, today. MORE »

* Dubai Port World will sell U.S. ports; the company “announced its decision after the White House appeared to signal that Mr. Bush wanted a face-saving way out of the shift by declining to repeat his veto threat.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
* Port saga upended Republican strategy for midterm elections. GOP pollster: “[Bush] has no political capital. Slowly but surely it’s been unraveling. There’s been a direct correlation between the trajectory of his approval numbers and the — I don’t want to call it disloyalty — the independence on the part of the Republicans in Congress.” [WP]
* Dubai Port World –and Bush– came to see the “political reality.” [NYT]
* Tribe chief secured meeting with Bush after donating $25,000 to Grover Norquist group at the advice of Jack Abramoff. [NYT]
* Senate panel receives its first White House briefing about NSA eavesdropping. [WP]
* Pentagon will let Iraqi forces deal with civil war, Rumsfeld says. [WP]
* Some fear the U.S. is becoming more protectionist and isolationist. [NYT, WP]
* Bush seeks more faith-based funds. [NYT, WP]
* Abramoff’s BMW had $48,000 worth of custom work. [NYT]

ABC’s headline for the heavily-hyped Vargas/Bush interview: MORE »