Excerpt from Dan Froomkin today:
About That August Vacation
Fury continues to mount in Washington over the Iraqi parliament's plan to take the month of August off. Such a vacation would be a PR calamity for the Bush administration, one that Vice President Cheney tried to avert in May when he traveled to Iraq and urged members not to take a summer recess.
As I wrote in my May 10 column, several House Republican moderates turned on the president in a highly unusual White House meeting, warning Bush that his credibility was shot and that Republican defections were in the offing.
Here is video of Tim Russert describing the meeting to Brian Williams on NBC: "One congressman said, 'How can our daughters and sons spill their blood while the Iraqi parliament goes on vacation?' The president responded, 'The vice president is over there to tell them: "Do not go on vacation." ' "
Apparently, not everyone does what Cheney tells them to do.
At Friday's press briefing, Snow tried to make excuses for the parliament. "You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," he said. That led ABC News's Martha Raddatz to point out that "it's 130 degrees for the U.S. military also on the ground."
But White House Watch reader Dan Flowers e-mailed me with a meteorological "fact check": " Weather Underground says the highest temperature last August was 118 F, and mean high temp was 112F. Not cool by any means, but not 130 F."
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