Meanwhile...Back At The Ranch...

WASHINGTON - "President Bush yesterday fired back at Colin Powell and urged Congress to join in backing legislation to spell out strategies for interrogating and trying terror suspects, saying, "The enemy wants to attack us again."

"Time is running out," Bush said in a Rose Garden news conference. "Congress needs to act wisely and promptly."

Bush denied the United States might lose the moral high ground in the war on terror, as former Secretary of State Colin Powell had suggested in a letter.

"It's unacceptable to think there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective," Bush said, growing animated as he spoke.

Bush called Powell's argument "flawed logic."

The president also:

* Called it an "urban myth" that his administration has given up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

* Admitted that immigration reform is all but dead in Congress.

* Made it clear he won't meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when both are in New York next week at the United Nations.

On Iraq, Bush said he regretted U.S. troop levels are rising. He blamed it on the recent surge in sectarian violence.

"We all want the troops to come home as quickly as possible," he said.

Bush denied anew that the surge in sectarian violence meant a civil war.

"I will continue to conduct the war. I'll listen to the generals," Bush said.

"Maybe it's not the politically expedient thing to do. But you can't make decisions based on politics about how to win a war."

Bush's news conference came a day after four Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee broke with the administration and joined Democrats in approving a bill assuring that foreign terrorism suspects would be accorded Geneva Convention protections. Bush claims that measure would compromise the war on terrorism.

He is urging the Senate to pass a bill more like a House-passed one that would allow his administration to continue holding and trying terror suspects before military tribunals and to give interrogators more leeway.

Bush said it was vital to clarify the law to protect intelligence professionals who are called on to question detainees to obtain vital information. He called it an important debate that "defines whether or not we can protect ourselves."

Colin Powel is a traitorous scum. There. I said it. Pained me to do so but a spade is a spade.