UPDATED - ColdType

to give big political contributions to get into bed
in the Lincoln Bedroom). USA Today gave us a
rare portrait yesterday of a President who is losing
it. “News coverage of the war often irritates
him. He’s infuriated by reporters and retired
generals who publicly question the tactics of the
war plan. Bush let senior Pentagon officials know
that he was peeved when Lt. Gen. William Wallace,
the army’s senior ground commander in
Iraq, said last week that guerrilla fighting, Iraqi
resistance, and sandstorms have made a longer
war more likely.” He has a special epithet for
members of his own staff who worry aloud. He
calls them “hand-wringers.”
And then there was this: “He can be impatient
and imperious. On March 17, before he delivered
a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam, Bush summoned
congressional leaders to the White
House. They expected a detailed briefing, but the
president told them he was notifying them only
because he was legally required to do so and
then left the room. They were taken aback, and
some were annoyed. Bush copes with anxiety as
he always has. He prays and exercises.”
The media massage
EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
OVER at the Pentagon, Tori Clarke has to keep
the Pentagon press corps in line. According to
today’s New York Times, now that the news
media has better access to the troops, she is
being peppered almost hourly with queries from
the battlefield about topics as varied as checkpoints,
rations, rescues, and killings of civilians.
More troubling, she faces a growing chorus,
including several retired generals, questioning
whether the war plan of Mr. Rumsfeld and his
lieutenants was ill advised and whether the
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administration fueled unrealistic expectations
that Iraqis would welcome American troops with
open arms.
Episodes like the news briefing on Tuesday are
part of the most difficult trial yet for Ms. Clarke,
43, who has devoted her career in politics and
public relations to working with clients in tricky
situations. As a campaign aide, she defended the
first President Bush as his popularity evaporated
in the polls. She later represented the cable
industry when it infuriated consumers with rising
rates and poor service.
This article goes on to report how well she is
doing in winning hearts and minds from the
media and the military. Maybe it is her colorful
clothes, which rated a fashion spread in the Post
the other day.
Iraq mistreats reporters
YESTERDAY two Newsday reporters freed from
prison in Iraq discussed their harrowing experience
at a press conference in Jordan. Their
newspaper reports: “Newsday staffers Moises
Saman and Matthew McAllester were recently
held in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison for eight days
with two other Western journalists and an American
peace activist. They described seeing a man
being beaten: ‘Journalists are meant to bear witness.
That’s rather the point of our job. We watch
and record and tell other people what we have
seen, perhaps in the hope that an account, a witnessing,
could eke away at badness. But I turned
away and chose not to see a thing.’
“Eventually the beating stopped, and the man
was dumped into his cell. The big guard seemed
to have exhausted his fury. The block echoed as it
always did when the iron bars of the prisoner’s