Gah

AP/Charlie Neibergall

Yes, he really is as dumb as he looks.

Here's some text from the transcript of Bush's interview with some conservative columnists yesterday (via Froomkin):

On the Palestinians:

"Iran empowered Hezbollah, Hezbollah takes the attack, and -- which creates an interesting dynamic, and it gives us an opportunity to fashion kind of -- an alliance of reasonable people headed toward a clash -- all kinds of different ways, by the way -- with extremists and radicals. I'm not necessarily speaking military. It makes it easier for us to isolate Iran in that the dynamics have changed. Hopefully, it will make it easier for us to be able to convince Syria to change, and/or isolate Syria."

On the upcoming election:

"It's not over. We've got the issues on our side. Protecting this country is the number-one issue. And you talk to -- admittedly, my focus groups are not broad, but people always say to me, thank you for protecting us. I view this as a struggle of good versus evil, by the way. I don't think religious people murder. I think people are misusing religion to justify their murder. And a lot of Americans understand it that way. Maybe it's not nuanced enough for some of the thinkers and all that stuff -- that's fine. But that's exactly what a lot of people like me think. And my job is to make it clear to the American people the stakes, and to spell it out as plainly as I can. And a lot of people understand it."

On al Queda (look out for vacuum cleaners!!):

"Here's the way I view the enemy there: al Qaeda is lethal as hell -- scratch the 'hell' -- it's lethal. The suiciders tend to be al Qaeda. The VBIEDs tend to be al Qaeda. The spectacular killings tend to be al Qaeda. We can't measure -- solely measure how many Shia killings are al Qaeda that then caused the Sunni reprisal. But you've got to know some are. A lot of the bloodshed these days, of course, is the revenge killings -- Sunni on Shia -- it's obvious. There is a criminal element in Iraq, as well, that the government is going to have to deal with. There is a vacuum, and into vacuum moved criminals."

Someone please save us from this crazy person.