Why I still love The Daily Show

Back after Thanksgiving holiday, The Daily Show covers the Bush visit to Iraq:

Jon Stewart: Our own Stephen Colbert was among the reporters who accompanied Bush on this unannounced trip. He's back from Iraq, he joins us now from Washington. Stephen, nice to see you again, welcome home. You guys in the White House corps cover the comings and goings of this administration every day, yet it sounds like nobody in the White House press corps had even a clue that this trip was going to take place...

Stephen Colbert: That's right, Jon. You gotta give the White House credit on this one...My colleagues and I are incredibly impressed by how well we were misled. And this was for a good cause -- just imagine if they were doing something they were ashamed of...We'd never find out. This just proves that we journalists shouldn't even try ... which we don't.

..snip..

JS: Clearly an incredible amount of logistics and foresight had to go into all of this.

SC: Yes, Jon, this visit was an extremely well coordinated operation, and the Bush team has learned a lot from the success of this mission that they can now apply to the rest of their work in Iraq. For instance, when it comes to planning...Do some.

This Thanksgiving trip has shown the president that a lot of the best preparation is done ... in advance. Unfortunately, with regard to our occupation of Iraq, we did all of our preparation afterwards, and now it's a seething cauldron of death and rage. But hey, that's why pencils have erasers.

Now, Lesson 2 of this Thanksgiving trip, with respect to an exit strategy ... Have one. What we saw last Thursday was a president with a clear idea of when and how he would leave Iraq ... Specifically, at noon and full of giblets.