Stop the Presses!

Christopher Hitchens finally finds something to criticize about the Bush Administration's prosecution of the Iraq war: the planting of propaganda stories in the Iraqi press. It may seem like a misdemeanor compared to this gang's serial felonies, but at least it's something. It would seem that even Hitch pays attention to opinion polls.

Then Again, On Second Thought...all that propaganda planting the Bushies have been doing, along with their even more systematic attempts to choke off legitimate information gathering and independent reporting are probably among their most important crimes. As The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel noted recently, information is the oxygen of democracy, and "this administration is trying to cut off the supply." Lately, that hasn't been working too well. And with their credibility at an all-time low, look for the media feeding frenzy to continue.

And Finally...They stopped the presses for a year, but finally got them going again to uncover a crucial additional bit of presidential overstepping of legal boundaries. Hats off to the NYTimes editor and publisher, Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger. They've had a hell of a rough year, but redeemed themselves, I think, by ultimately ignoring the Imperial Presidency's requests to bottle up this story for good, for reasons of national security. Good for them. Bush no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt on anything. Liars never do.