PRES. BUSH'S PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY demonstrated both his detachment from reality and his refusal to accept personal responsibility for his own policy failures.

Nope, there's no civil war, he insists:

The president said he did not agree with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who told the British Broadcasting Corporation Sunday, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

Bush said others inside and outside Iraq think the nation has stopped short of civil war. "There are other voices coming out of Iraq, by the way, other than Mr. Allawi, who I know by the way -- like. A good fellow."

"We all recognized that there is violence, that there is sectarian violence. But the way I look at the situation is, the Iraqis looked and decided not to go into civil war."

Well, now, that's a compelling argument.

Nope, nothing wrong with Donald Rumsfeld's job performance; no reason for him to step down:

"I don't believe he should resign. He's done a fine job. Every war plan looks good on paper until you meet the enemy," he said.

Funny -- Bush & co. did not tell us that the war plan -- such as it was -- would become useless as soon as they invaded Iraq.

"I didn't want war":

"To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong ... with all due respect," he told a reporter. "No president wants war." To those who say otherwise, "it's simply not true," Bush said.

Here's why he doesn't want war:

"I understand war creates concerns," the president said. "Nobody likes war. It creates a sense of uncertainty in the country."

I guess you can't really be shocked at such a shallow understanding of what war is like from someone who spent his generation's war in Texas and Alabama, rather than in Vietnam. But it has to be said: If "it's simply not true" that Bush wants war, then why does he consider a time when American troops will no longer be in Iraq to be merely "an objective" to be left to "future" administrations?

And one more thing. Does anyone else feel like vomiting when Pres. Bush says this:

And for people to say, "Well, the natural rights only, you know, exist for one group of people," I would call them, you know -- I would say that they're denying the basic rights to others.

... after spending the last five years denying those same "natural rights" to Arab and Muslim detainees by making up phony legal justifications mostly based on where the prisoners are being held and whether they are called "prisoners of war" or "enemy combatants"?