Zoo Station

President Bush has had an underwhelming tour of Asia this past week, dogged just about everywhere he visited by questions about Iraq. The only exception to this rule was Mongolia, where the first visit ever by a sitting U.S. president received a very warm welcome. The spinmeisters decided to take advantage of this opportunity and go into spin overkill. According to them, Mongolia is a key member of the 'coalition of the willing' since it has the third-highest military presence in Iraq, on a per-capita basis. While third-highest per capita sounds pretty painful in and of itself, guess how many soldiers Mongolia has in Iraq? 160! Yes, that's right, the third-highest troop presence per-capita adds upto 160 soldiers. This sort of desperate spinning is probably a good indicator of how desperate the administration is to latch on to anything remotely positive about the Iraq war. Not to mention having the exact opposite effect from what the spinmeisters intended.