That's what Joe Consaon asks in his journal at Salon. I agree with the part about mocking Howard Dean and creating a story about his rage where none exists. And the use of the 16 seconds of tape from Iowa was beneath contempt. But I don't see the problem with the press listening respectfully to BushCo's arrant lunacy. Bush occupies the office of the Presidency after all. He doesn't deserve it. He didn't earn it. But that's where he is so he deserves respect from the press corps that he humiliates at every chance.
My problem with the White House press is that they don't follow through on stories that matter. That's why Michael Moore's comments calling Bush a deserter created a dust-up. Mainstream media didn't do their job the first time the story came up and they're doing their best to avoid it again.
Now another big story is struggling to break. David Sanger of the NYTimes does a good job following up on Bush's confusing non-answers to the questions about his administrations' use or misuse of either good or bad intelligence. But it's easy to do the next day. This should stay a front page story until all the questions are answered. It deserves at least as much attention as Hillary Clinton's law practice did. Was there pressure from Cheney to bias the intelligence? Is the White House in the total disarray that it conveys - State v. Defense, Rice v. Rummy, Bremer out of the loop completely, Cheney apparently off the reservation when it comes to WMD information, Bush an incurious empty suit at meetings. We used American intelligence. We used British intelligence. Dr. Kay wants the CIA to explain what went wrong. Bush says the intelligence his administration used was "darn good". The story is that nobody can keep the story straight and nobody cares for more than a day.
There are enough loose threads to fill a month of front pages and at least a few of those A10 charts/timelines that the NYTimes is so famous for. The mainstream press needs to start looking at this enormous problem before we are victims of another "October Surprise" that distracts America just in time for Election Day.
UPDATE: Campaign Desk mentions the Conason journal and feels like a reporter at the press conference yesterday should have called Bush on his mention of the increasingly entrenched false memory that Saddam wouldn't let inpsectors into Iraq and that's why we went to war. I agree that it would have been productive to see Bush squirm and scramble not to answer the question. I wish someone had followed up. But the real shame is that not enough people in the mainstream have followed up on this since he said it last summer.
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