Spencer Ackermen: Earlier this month, Chris Nelson's influential Washington newsletter The Nelson Report wrote that President Bush's almost pathologically optimistic Iraq statements were attributable to real information about the country--just information drawn from a pool so restricted as to be unavoidably misleading:
Increasingly, bad news includes that the White House only wants to hear good news. Senior officials warn that efforts to honestly discuss the security situation are personally rebuffed by the President. It isn't clear whether Bush IS being told the truth, but doesn't care to discuss it outside of the Rice/Cheney/Rumsfeld triangle, or if he has placed himself (or been placed?) in a sanitized bubble where aides only tell him the "good news" about school openings, etc. ... Outside the bubble, the uniforms, and U.S. intelligence, are increasingly doubtful. But their views aren't getting through political appointees officially tasked with blocking "dissent."
Ah, Spencer Ackerman reads The Nelson Report, while George W. Bush reads blarghs. I'm feeling so much better about both the future of journalism (yes, kissing up to the pajamahadeen is just that sad.) and the future adventures of America at War.