President George Bush surprised himself in Baghdad this week by boldly predicting that he had "turned a corner."

"Today I looked myself in the eye," he said, "and I liked what I saw."

President Bush had originally travelled to Iraq to encourage Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to establish a true democracy "just like America's," he said. "You know, with illegal wiretapping, policies determined by extreme religious groups, the whole works."

Bush, swollen with pride after U.S. troops successfully killed terrorist leader Musab al-zaquari, told the Iraqi people that everything was on the upswing for him now. "I don't read the polls," he told them, "but I sure want the ones I'm not reading to be really good."

When pressed by reporters to say something about the future of Iraq, he told them he was confident that Iraq's poll numbers would get better, too.

Cross-posted in slightly different form at LiberalOasis.