So these past several months when President Bush has deflected questions about progress in Iraq with statements like, “I’m going to wait for… David Petraeus to come back and give us the report on what he sees,” he’s been bluffing us. David Petraeus isn’t writing any reports — the much-ballyhooed September report that will give America an update on the situation on the ground in Iraq will be written by propoganda artists sitting in offices in Washington DC, likely in the White House itself.
Should this bother us? I know, telling the public one thing and doing the other is standard fare for this administration, but now that we know this is the procedure, I wonder if all important reports about Iraq have been written from the White House, regardless of their official offices of origin. It feels so cynical to say, “Of course!” But it feels that with the Bushies, the most cynical answer is almost always the right one.
