Neoconservative columnist Bill Kristol is seen by many to have unique insight and access into the inner workings of the White House and its war policy.
He used that access this week to assure Daily Show host Jon Stewart that President Bush does not think he is a "pussy," but US Gen. David Petraeus might.
"Isn't leadership bringing along a country and not chastising those who disagree and making them feel like pussies?" Stewart asked, is arguing Bush was merely stubborn in pursuing the Iraq war in the face of public opposition.
Kristol defended the president.
"He's never made you feel like a pussy," the Weekly Standard editor insisted. "I've talked to the president about you, and I want to assure you, he told me to tell you this. He does not consider you a pussy."
At the end of the interview, Kristol joked the commander of US troops in Iraq may have a different opinion of the fake-news anchor. Stewart asked whether Kristol could get Petraeus to appear as a guest.
"He thinks you're a pussy," Kristol said.
On the Huffington Post, John Seery excoriated Kristol's appearance on the Daily Show, in which he continued to defend President Bush's war strategy and insisted that the ongoing troop surge was helping to pacify Iraq.
"How could someone love war so much? Kristol characteristically espouses war ... as his frequently preferred strategic policy tool," Seery writes. "Armchair analysts would surely submit that Kristol's emotionally damaged psyche indicates arrested Oedipalism combined with Napoleonic little-man complexities fostered along intellectually by crypto-Straussian homoerotic male-bonding rituals for compensatory manliness. Myself, I just can't fathom what might fully explain his singular brand of chickenhawk weirdness."
The following video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast on August 13.