Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post incurred official disfavor by writing about the
taboo subject of how much the President loves to lie. A prescient article in the fall of 2002
questioned several of the Bush's overblown claims regarding an imminent Iraqi threat to
America. In light of subsequent events (e.g., the fact that Saddam did not pose much of a
military threat to Americans in Baghdad, let alone Cincinnati), one can see why Milbank
aroused the ire of the White House press operation.
By withholding routine information such as travel itineraries from troublesome reporters
like Milbank, the White House was able to prevent them from asking embarrassing
questions. It's hard to ask the President embarrassing questions if you can't find him.
It wasn't just the White House. Over at the Pentagon, tough guy Donald Rumsfeld
knew how to court-martial a nosy reporter. "This is by far the worst it's ever been," said
Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, a ten-year veteran of the Pentagon beat. When Ricks
asked why he had been excluded from a trip on which American journalists were allowed to
cover a Special Forces operation for the first time, a press affairs officer told him: "We don't
like your stories, and we don't like the questions you've been asking."
Since that incident, the only question Ricks has asked is "What kind of story would
you like to see in the Washington Post tomorrow?"
A top news executive at one of the three major networks who spoke with me through
an intermediary on the condition of anonymity for both of them and who insisted that I give
no distinguishing information about him or her, said off the record, "This is the most cowed
White House press corps in history."
Those early months were heady days for George W Bush. Emboldened by his landslide victory,
Bush passed a $1.6 trillion tax cut which went primarily to the rich, pulled out of the
Kyoto Protocol, delayed rules that would reduce acceptable levels of arsenic in the drinking
water, and implemented the enormously successful Operation Ignore.
Ironically, it took a man of Bush's own party to bring his extended honeymoon to a
close. Jim Jeffords, an obscure senator from a little known state called "Vermont," had been
on the receiving end of a series of petty slights, provoked by his bothersome habit of voting
his conscience. To punish Jeffords, the cagey Karl Rove had decided not to invite him to a
White House ceremony honoring one of Jeffords's own constituents, Michele Forman of
Middlebury, as the Teacher of the Year.