It Could Be Worse. You Could Be Married To Him

Man. The president must be Master of his Domain. We can't even get Mrs. IM to stop on the way home for a little of the fruit of the vine, but he gets his significant other to go all the way to Israel for him.

Mrs. Bush began her Middle East trip on Friday acknowledging that the United States' image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by her husband and a magazine report, since retracted. "We're pretty sure it's the Newsweek article because they seem to be over the whole invasion, occupation, puppet government thing," she told reporters.

When told that the prisoner abuses and not the alleged desecration the Koran reported by Newsweek were more likely the causes of unrest, Mrs. Bush responded that she "Deplored any abuses. That's not really what happens all the time. That's not what our troops really do. This is a handful of people. People like Rumsfield and Rice for example."

Asked if her trip would help placate Muslims, Mrs. Bush said: "Well I hope so. You know, who knows. I mean I don't know. Hell, George doesn't know what he's doing, so I figured I'd try and help out. Lord knows he needs it. Have you seen his poll numbers lately?"

Speaking in the mostly Arab Israeli village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, Mrs. Bush said protests had not been unexpected. "Everyone knows how badly George has screwed the pooch over here but believe me, I was very, very welcomed by most people," she said. "Well, most of the people who were paid to be nice to me anyway."

"There are thousands of years of fighting and hatred, but what I'm hoping is that it's the one sided, narrowly conceived selfish policies of my husband that puts that aside so that we can all come to the Holy Land in peace," she told reporters in the gardens of the 12th-century Church of the Resurrection. "Well, the Christians anyway. Shouldn't the Muslims all go to Saudi Arabia? Isn't that where Mecca is?"

A small crowd of Muslims, some shouting, pressed in on her as she entered Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque, and Israeli police and U.S. Secret Service agents formed a tight cordon around her to push them back. Shortly beforehand, her visit to the adjacent Western Wall complex had been met by dozens of nationalist Jews. "My husband often says he's a uniter, not a divider," she told reporters. "This is certainly a good example of that."