Dishonesty Overload

Glenn Greenwald has a great post contrasting the late David Halberstam's work in Vietnam with our current press corps sorry track record during the march to and execution of the current mess in the Iraq. The juxtaposition of reporters like Halbertsam and Neil Sheehan with a Tim Russert or a Judith Miller is nothing less than depressing. In many ways it is bloggers like Greenwald and Josh Marshall who have filled the void left by the mainstream press which have clearly abdicated their responsibility to work hard to uncover the truth.

Frank Rich probably does the best job pulling together the disparate strings that make up the entire tapestry of this administrations lies each week in the Sunday NYT. Greenwald here brings together Halberstam in contrast with Russert and Newsweek's Richard Wolff, and at the same time I am reading this, Henry Waxman has Jessica Lynch and Kevin Tillman before the House oversight committee, detailing the lies and mythmaking that the military and the administration built up around their real life tragedies in Iraq. This on the day after President Bush declared that after watching Attorney General Gonzales' testimony before Congress (a performance one White House aide likened to the clubbing of a seal) he has MORE confidence in him as attorney general than he did previously. This on a day when Paul Wolfowitz hires Bob Bennett in an attempt to save his job and what little reputation he may have left. There are so many instances of dishonesty that the head spins, but when you wind them together, an overwhelming sense of arrogance pervades the entire sorry affair. You can probably draw a straight line from John Yoo's 'unitary executive' to Bush's obstinant refusal to back down on Gonzales.

He acts this way because he's the President, and the President can do whatever he wants. It is really as simple as that.