Propaganda, Bush-style

A pair of quasi-related news items to showcase how the Bush White House attempts to control public perception and rewrite history:

• Winning the War on Talking Points
  With all the heat coming down on the Bush Administration for distorting intelligence on Iraqi WMDs to build a case for war, what's a President to do? Why, launch a public relations strategy (read: propaganda push) to counter the charges.

  Never mind that we're talking about matters of national security, foreign policy, and the deaths of thousands of servicemen and Iraqi civilians -- when the going gets tough, roll out the commercials! Apparently, invading another country and starting a war on false pretenses is fundamentally the same as selling a new brand of detergent...

• The White House's War on Transcripts
  Last week, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan inadvertently led the Administration into (more) ca-ca by affirming that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had conversations about Valerie Plame's status as an undercover CIA agent.

  Ignoring the fact that the exchange was earwitnessed by several dozen reporters, the White House Press Office subsequently tried to get CQ Transcriptions and the Federal News Service to "correct" their transcripts to match the Administration's desired version of events. Fortunately for the rest of us, both CQ Transcriptions and FNS have declined to alter their accounts -- and CQ has made the request public, putting the Administration into (even more) ca-ca as a result.

What was it that Ronnie Reagan said again?
Oh, yes: "Facts are stupid things."