Another senator starts hitting the salted peanuts

Republican Senator Warner acknowledges that Iraq has become, as Jon Stewart coined it the other night, "a catastrofuck."

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 -- The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was "drifting sideways," responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment.

"I don't believe that the president thinks that way," Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said when asked whether the president agreed with the senator, John Warner of Virginia. "I think that he believes that while it is tough going in Iraq, that slow progress is being made."

Real, real slow.

But anyway, that's not a state of denial by the president. That's just keeping the salted peanuts away from the public.