The embattled White House — in the midst of an avoidable quagmire in Iraq, an utter lack of WMD, no real connection between Saddam and Al Queda, and a complete failure in locating either boogeyman we’ve been chasing for 2+ years (not to mention the Plame affair) — has gone on the offensive. Powell, Rice, and Cheney have all given aggressive speeches in the last week (Cheney’s was apparently the standout) wherein they insist again how justified the action in Iraq was, how bad Saddam was, how useless the UN was, and how (PNAC-style) we can and should do anything we want. (They leave out the whole lies-about-yellowcake bit, not to mention the complete-lack-of-postwar-planning bit, and don’t even ask about the how-can-we-afford-to-do-this-alone problem.)

Also included in this PR offensive may be a campaign of identical letters from different soldiers published in newspapers across the country this week. Gee, I wonder who wrote them?