The Genius and Honesty of Our Beloved Leader

By the time the president wound his way back to the "consequences of success" in Iraq today, his goals seemed to be just a little more limited: "Slowly but surely, the truth will be known. Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success, as I described, is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."

Update: As Think Progress notes, the definition of success the president offered today sounds a lot like something John Kerry used to say -- that we'll never eliminated acts of terrorism, but that we've got to get to the point where terrorists are reduced to a "nuisance." Of course, when Kerry said that in 2004, Bush claimed that his challenger "fundamentally misunderstands the war against terror." "Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance," Bush said then. "Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying the networks, and spreading freedom and liberty."

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