Beyond bad taste

George W. Bush's capacity for tasteless exploitation seems quite bottomless now:

Bush pokes fun at himself at dinner

... There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

John Kerry has the appropriate response:

That's supposed to be funny?

If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought. Unfortunately for the President, this is not a joke.

585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded, and there's no end in sight. Bush Turned White House Credibility into a Joke George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's funny?

At The Nation, David Corn gives us a little historical perspective on this:

Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands? Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action in Vietnam: 'Who knew that fish had torpedoes?' Or if Ronald Reagan appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and said, 'Guess we forgot to put in a stop light'. Or if Clinton had come out after the bombing of Serbia -- during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The problem is, those embassies -- they all look alike."

Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation -- he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline.

Also worth reading: Bob Fertik's take at Democrats.com.

Of course, it's also worth remembering that this isn't the first time that Bush has made tasteless jokes that come at the expense of American dead and wounded:

"You know, when I was running for President, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta."

Actually, it's not so much Bush's tastelessness that is revealed in these jokes. It is his utter lack of good judgment. It bespeaks a president who is unable to comprehend the consequences of his own decisions. All of which makes his unfitness for the office so starkly manifest.