Travelgate II?

Vice President Cheney -- for some strange reason -- is hiding who is paying his travel expenses.

The Real Bush Doctrine, one more time, folks (perhaps it's really the Cheney doctrine, because as we saw, it was imported from Halliburton):

What's the least we can possibly do to appear to be conforming with the letter of the law while we violate the spirit of the law?


Christopher Lee writes in the Washington Post:


"Open-government advocates say that Vice President Cheney is to executive branch secrecy what darkness is to the night.

"In 2001, Cheney famously refused to disclose the names of oil company executives and others who attended meetings of a White House energy task force that he headed, which helped draft a national energy policy.

"More recently, a government watchdog group has called attention to less noticed records that Cheney has sought to keep private: travel costs.

"In a report this month, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity said Cheney and his staff have sidestepped regulations that require annual reporting of travel expenses of more than $250 received from outside groups. The center, which focuses on ethics and public service issues, said previous vice presidents routinely disclosed such payments for lodging, travel and food when the veep and his staff made appearances at colleges, think tanks and trade associations.

"'The private sector reimburses elected officials and bureaucrats for such trips, but laws require officials to disclose where they went, how much it costs and who paid for it,' the report said, citing provisions found in Section 1353 of Title 13 of the U.S. Code.

"Cheney's office says nothing is amiss. In three letters since 2002 to the Office of Government Ethics, which collects the travel reports, David S. Addington, then Cheney's general counsel, noted that the reporting requirement applies to the 'head of each agency of the executive branch.'

"'The Office of the Vice President is not an "agency of the executive branch," and hence the reporting requirement does not apply,' wrote Addington, who this month replaced I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby as Cheney's chief of staff.

"Since 2003, President Bush's office has reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in such travel, the center noted. And all but one office within the Executive Office of the President -- the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board -- has done so.

"It doesn't matter, according to Addington. In a Feb. 25 letter to Marilyn Glynn, acting director of the ethics office, he wrote that 'none of the Vice President's employees . . . accepted payments under Section 1353.'

"Yet, according to the center's research, Cheney has given 23 speeches to think tanks and trade organizations and 16 at academic institutions since 2001 -- apparently all at taxpayers' expense.

"'[I]t appears that his office labels them "official travel," ' the center said. 'As a result . . . the public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.'

The Democrat Trap, Revisited

The L.A. Times finally looks back to examine the intersection of the Iraq War and the 2002 midterm elections.

The Bush administration's glib Communications Director, Dan Bartlett is still using it to bludgeon Democrats.

It also looks like we may start drawing troops down in Iraq -- according to this Newsweek piece -- just in time for the 2006 midterm elections.

I suppose that if things go poorly upon the withdrawal, the Administration will blame it on the Democrats and their "retreat and defeat" attitude.


"Timing Entwined War Vote, ElectionBy Ronald Brownstein and Emma Vaughn, Times Staff Writers

"WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, rememembers the exchange vividly.The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

"But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber's schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

"'I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: "Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?" He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: "We just have to do this now."'

"Daschle's account, which White House officials said they could not confirm nor deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

"Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, did not call for a vote authorizing the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm election. But the vote paving the way for the second war with Iraq came in mid-October of 2002 — at the height of an election campaign in which Republicans were systematically portraying Democrats as weak on national security.

Dan Froomkin also gives us this stunning pair of insights into Bush, the Messiah:

"Two new reports are out suggesting that President Bush -- never one to encourage dissent -- is less interested than ever in listening to facts that conflict with his fervently held views.

"[Seymour] Hersh , in his New Yorker barnburner: 'Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

"'Bush's closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush's first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President's religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that 'God put me here' to deal with the war on terror. The President's belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that 'he's the man,' the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

"'The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: ''I said to the President, 'We're not winning the war.' And he asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.' " The President, he said, "appeared displeased" with that answer.

"' "I tried to tell him," the former senior official said. "And he couldn't hear it." . . .

"' "The President is more determined than ever to stay the course," [a] former defense official said. "He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.' " He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. "They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway," the former defense official said. Bush's public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. "Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,'" the former official said, "but Bush has no idea."'

"Hersh spoke with Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday about his article.

"'He believes that he's doing the right thing, and he's not going to stop until he gets -- either until he's out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins."

"Thomas M. DeFrank and Kenneth R. Bazinet write in the New York Daily News that embattled White House aides "have circled the wagons as Bush's woes mount, partly hoping they can sell the President on a December blitz of media interviews to help turn the tide.

"' "The staff basically still has an unyielding belief in the wisdom of what they're doing," a close Bush confidant said. "They're talking to people who could help them, but they're not listening."

"'Two sources said Bush has not only lost some confidence in his top aides, as the Daily News has previously reported , but is furious with a stream of leaks about the mood within the West Wing.

"'"He's asking [friends] for opinions on who he can trust and who he can't," one knowledgeable source said. . . .

"'A card-carrying member of the Washington GOP establishment with close ties to the White House recently encountered several senior presidential aides at a dinner and came away shaking his head at their "no problems her" mentality.

"''There is just no introspection there at all," he said in exasperation. "It is everybody else's fault -- the press, gutless Republicans on the Hill. They're still in denial."'"

Stunning.

The Warriors

Bush's New Propaganda Campaign

Richard B. Simon
November 11, 2005


Yesterday, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley attacked Democrats who are saying that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to lead the nation into Iraq. The Administration's argument is that Democrats saw the same intelligence. But it leaves out a fairly important fact: the Bush Administration was the source of the intelligence seen by Congress.

Congress was given the false intelligence, and based their support for the war on that.

Today, President Bush made a speech continuing the same line.

And we can expect top Administration officials to make the rounds of morning news shows this weekend to repeat the same charges.

It's a classic propaganda technique. "All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

That's Adolph Hitler, in his manifesto Mein Kampf.

Bush won the Presidency in 2004 because of a massive, scorched-earth propaganda campaign. It was based on attacking the credibility of his opponent, Democratic Senator John Kerry.

Its centerpiece was the fear appeal, led by Vice President Cheney: If you vote for Kerry, there's going to be another terrorist attack, and a major American city will be destroyed. Only Bush and Cheney can protect you.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, and a major American city was destroyed on Bush's watch, it burst the propaganda bubble. Except for an astounding 1/3 of the population that supports President Bush without question or fail, Americans have seen everything the Administration has said or done since as cheap, cynical tactics designed to try to restore credibility to a White House whose reputation was really always based on the manufactured credibility of a "likeable" man.

The indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's top aide, for lying under oath and obstruction of justice, has only underscored Americans' perception that the Bush Administration is fundamentally dishonest.

To fight this perception, the Administration is once again on the propaganda warpath. In other words, President Bush is using fundamentally dishonest tactics to try to convince the American people that he is not fundamentally dishonest.

A report in the New York Times last night reports that the President's top advisor, Karl Rove, is "the old Karl Rove" again -- grinning and high-stepping as if he were not still under the threat of indictment. He is in campaign mode -- so Americans beware. You are in Rove's crosshairs.

The "ethics classes" in the White House are the first move, designed to convey the appearance that the President is doing something to "clean house." But it is a safe bet that, as the office of the President's loyal attorney, White House Counsel Harriet Miers, summons each and every White House official in for ethical re-education, the rules of this new disinformation campaign are being sown among the ranks.

The Bush Administration's new argument to re-build his credibility is crystal clear: Democrats and other critics of the war are hypocrites. In the case of the Democrats, well they saw the intelligence and they voted for the war, so if they are now saying the intelligence was false, then they are hypocrites. Why, then, did they vote for the war?

This, of course, makes no mention of the propaganda campaign of the summer of 2002, the central argument of which was:

1. ....(If) Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear)
.......(And) Saddam and Osama are in Cahoots
.......(Then) A U.S. Invasion of Iraq would be just -- because it is self-defense.

2. ...(If) a U.S. invasion of Iraq is just, because it is self-defense
.......(And) any Democrats oppose the Invasion
.......(Then) The Democrats are soft on national security -- traitors even.

3. ...(If) Democrats are soft on national security
.......(And) Iraq is an imminent NUCLEAR threat
.......(Then) You must send more Republicans to Congress to avoid nuclear attack.

This is how the Bush Administration used Iraq to divide the country in order to achieve Republican control of the entire Federal Government. Unfortunately, a divided America does not win wars. Nor does it support wars that look like they are not going well. Hence Bush's problems today.

The push to sell the Iraq War and use it to take control of Congress began less than a year after the September 11 attacks, when Bush's popularity, and therefore his credibility, was still very high, elevated by Americans' natural response to rally around the President after the attacks. That's why some 70% of the American people supported the Invasion of Iraq. They believed Bush.

But if you look at what the Bush Administration is saying now, they are accusing not only Democrats, but all critics of how the Administration led us to war, of hypocrisy. That means that not only Democrats, but all Americans who bought into the 2002 propaganda campaign, are now the targets of a new propaganda campaign designed to make them feel like hypocrites for changing their mind about the war.

Not only that, they are being accused by the President of undermining the troops on the front line.

Here is what Bush said today, with interesting points highlighted, and analysis below:

"When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support. I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn't support the liberation of Iraq, and that is their right, and I respect it. As president and commander in chief, I [accept] the responsibilities and the criticisms and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision. While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

"Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the president of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hand is a threat and a grave threat to our security.'

"That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send to them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that when -- whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less then victory."



1. As president and commander in chief, I [accept] the responsibilities and the criticisms and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.

The social scientists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson include in their text Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, a chapter titled "How Do You Persuade if Everyone Knows You Are Untrustworthy, Unbelievable, and Disliked?" Bush, who 57% of Americans now believe misled the nation into Iraq, certainly falls under this category.

One of the two main strategies the non-credible communicator can use is arguing against one's own self interest. The other is trying not to appear to be attempting to persuade.

By accepting responsibility -- which he has almost never done (only after Katrina) -- Bush appears to be arguing against his own self-interest. This acheives both goals, and makes him appear credible, when he is not.

2. While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

Now Bush is accusing his opponents of hypocrisy and dishonesty, for trying to "rewrite history".

Clearly here, his opponents include those 57% of Americans who believe they were misled into war. Pratkanis and Aronson call this tactic the "rationalization trap":

"The trap goes like this. First the propagandist intentionally arouses feelings of dissonance by threatening self-esteem -- for example, by making the person feel guilty about something, by arousing feelings of shame or inadequacy, or by making the person look like a hypocrite or someone who does not honor his or her word. Next, the propagandist offers one solution, one way of reducing this dissonance -- by complying with whatever request the propagandist has in mind. The way to reduce guilt, eliminate that shame, honor that commitment, and restore your feelings of adequacy is to give to that charity, but that car, hate that enemy, or vote for that leader." (p. 45)

In this case, Bush is arousing dissonance by accusing Democrats, everyone who voted for John Kerry, and everyone who supported the war then but is accusing Bush of manipulating intelligence now of hypocrisy. He is saying 57% of Americans are hypocrites because they believed Bush the first time, but do not believe him anymore.

He also accuses his critics of "rewriting history." This is a projection tactic: the Administration has repeatedly tried to recast the events surrounding the run-up to the war (particularly how the weapons inspection process went). And it is what the President is doing in this very speech.

3. ... a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs

This Senate committee did not look into how the Administration actually used that intelligence.

4. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Many of these resolutions dated back to the 1991 Gulf War. Some were made under American pressure during the runup to the invasion of Iraq, which relied on false intelligence -- presented by Colin Powell, who has now disavowed his presentation of that information to the U.N. as the low point of his career. The resolutions were also made with assurances by the Administration that it would go to war only as a last resort. We know now that the war was a foregone conclusion, and that the appeal to the U.N. was designed to create the appearance of an attempt to gain legitimacy and international support.This is another example of the Administration attempting to "rewrite history."

5. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election ...

This part of the speech is an attempt to tie criticism of the Administration to 2004 candidate John Kerry. Kerry was defeated largely because of the Administration's scortched-earth propaganda campaign, which undermined Kerry by attacking his credibility using surrogates like the "Swift Boat Vets". It is designed to summon feelings of shame and hypocrisy among those who bought into the 2004 propaganda campaign: you're agreeing with that ridiculous flip-flopper John Kerry who voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it.

6. That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Congress received its information from the Bush Administration. This is the same information that the Administration is now accused of manipulating to make its case for war.It must also be noted that the Democrats were cowed into submission by an extremely popular President who was accusing them of being soft on national security and therefore "un-American". This is what happened to Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran. His Republican opponent ran television ads that alternated his face with the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland was defeated in the 2002 midterm elections.

7. The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send to them to war continue to stand behind them.

Here, Bush is clearly arousing guilt. If you believe that we manipulated intelligence, if you attack me or my Administration, you are undermining the troops and giving aid to the enemy. Therefore, you must no longer accuse my administration of manipulating the intelligence to lead the country into this war. Otherwise, if terrorists destroy our way of life, it will be your fault.

He also gives his supporters a way out -- by blaming their current belief that the Administration was dishonest on "false charges" "thrown out" by "politicians."

8. And our troops deserve to know that when -- whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less then victory."

That our nation must be united in order to achieve victory is correct. But coming from a President who purposefully divided the country as an integral component of the propaganda campaign that he and his administration waged to lead this country into this war, it is an outrage.

The President's message is that in order to defeat the terrorists, we must be united, unquestioningly, behind him. If we lose, it will be because we did not support him.

This is a rationalization trap: an arousal of guilt, then the suggested response -- unite, unquestioningly, behind the president.

The central message of the Bush Administration's new "campaign-style" propaganda push -- and make no mistake, that is exactly what we are seeing here -- is this:

Questioning the administration now is hypocritical and it aids the enemy.

This is exactly the same message that the Bush Administration used -- in concert with manipulated intelligence -- to take control of Congress and to lead us into Iraq.

There were many good reasons for the United States to work to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. We supported him. We gave him chemical weapons. He was a mess of our making, which we never cleaned up after the Cold War. He was a threat to the global oil supply, and therefore to the global economy. And our sanctions were not working -- he was subverting them and still starving his people.

But the Bush Administration, rather than making an honest case for war, waged a propaganda campaign designed to divide the country, in order to take control of Congress, even as it manufactured support for the invasion of Iraq.

That support for the war was based on false premises is now clear to the vast majority of Americans. But instead of coming clean and repairing the damage done to the nation and to the Presidency, as the best of leaders would have done, President Bush has chosen to fall right back into the same cycle of deceit and manipulation, using tactics that were perfected by the very worst of leaders.

We need to succeed in Iraq, and we need to succeed in the greater War on Terror. Bush outlined some of the real reasons for this in the earlier portions of his speech.

However, an argument can always be judged by its conclusion. These are the thoughts that the arguer wants the audience to carry home, fresh in mind. And Bush's closing argument is clearly designed to restore his own credibility by manipulating the emotions of his audience and attacking the credibility of everyone who disagrees with him.

If we are to succeed in the war against violent Islamic fundamentalism, we need real leadership.

But a man who relies on deceit and manipulation to gain the trust of his own people is no leader at all.


.

Evangelicals Join Fight Against Global Warming

The good news is that evangelicals are starting to understand the meaning of being good stewards of God's earth.

The bad news is that they don't yet seem to have been able to make the connection between their voting habits and the environmental records of the people for whom they vote.

The most interesting perspective in here is that of Senator James Inhofe, the Oil-state Republican who is in charge of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- and who equates Global Warming with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

According to this New York Times piece, Inhofe says he doubts evangelicals will weigh on for controls on global warming because it doesn't square with a "conservative agenda" that includes anti-gay and anti-abortion positions.

Huh?

This is either evidence that the very idea of Inhofe being qualified for national office is itself the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the people of Oklahoma -- or a perhaps inadvertent admission that the Republican Party uses a so-called "conservative agenda" on hot-button social topics to trick voters into supporting Republican postions that run counter to their interests on other issues, like global warming.

That's also evidenced by the assertion, late in the piece, that evangelicals don't like environmentalists because of their presumed "nontraditional religiosity".

Inhofe here is caught actually suggesting that evangelicals who support action to reduce global warming have been tricked by liberals. They have also been fooled into supporting policies that would do something about poverty.

How could evangelicals believe that stuff? Those aren't Republican positions! We own those people!

The idea that evangelicals could now be supporting action to curb what Inhofe views as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people" strikes Inhofe as "something very strange."

You can see the furrowed brow, the fingers scratching the head.

It's called cognitive dissonance, Senator Inhofe.

Maybe you should stop drinking your own Kool Aid.

The bad news for Republicans is that they are being used by the evangelicals, just as they used the evangelicals to win in 2004.

The real bad news is that we have reached a state where nothing can be accomplished in the United States of America without the explicit support of one particular religion-based voting bloc.

From:

When Cleaner Air Is a Biblical Obligation
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
November 7, 2005

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 - In their long and frustrated efforts pushing Congress to pass legislation on global warming, environmentalists are gaining a new ally.With increasing vigor, evangelical groups that are part of the base of conservative support for leading Republicans are campaigning for laws that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists have linked with global warming.

"In the latest effort, the National Association of Evangelicals, a nonprofit organization that includes 45,000 churches serving 30 million people across the country, is circulating among its leaders the draft of a policy statement that would encourage lawmakers to pass legislation creating mandatory controls for carbon emissions.

"Environmentalists rely on empirical evidence as their rationale for Congressional action, and many evangelicals further believe that protecting the planet from human activities that cause global warming is a values issue that fulfills Biblical teachings asking humans to be good stewards of the earth.

"'Genesis 2:15,' said Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs, citing a passage that serves as the justification for the effort: 'The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.'

"'We believe that we have a rightful responsibility for what the Bible itself challenges,' Mr. Cizik said. 'Working the land and caring for it go hand in hand. That's why I think, and say unapologetically, that we ought to be able to bring to the debate a new voice.'

"By themselves, environmental groups have made scant progress on global warming legislation in Congress, beyond a nonbinding Senate resolution last summer that recommends a program of mandatory controls on gases that cause global warming.Officials with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council said they welcomed the added muscle evangelicals could bring to their cause. But they agreed that it remained uncertain how much difference it could make.

"A major obstacle to any measure that would address global warming is Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and an evangelical himself, but a skeptic of climate change caused by human activities. Mr. Inhofe has led efforts to keep mandatory controls on greenhouse gases out of any emission reduction bill considered by his committee and has called human activities contributing to global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

'You can always find in Scriptures a passage to misquote for almost anything,' Mr. Inhofe said in an interview, dismissing the position of Mr. Cizik's association as 'something very strange.'

"Mr. Inhofe said the vast majority of the nation's evangelical groups would oppose global warming legislation as inconsistent with a conservative agenda that also includes opposition to abortion rights and gay rights.

"He said the National Evangelical Association had been "led down a liberal path" by environmentalists and others who have convinced the group that issues like poverty and the environment are worth their efforts.

"At the same time, Mr. Inhofe said he took the association's stance seriously because of the influence its leaders had on people who generally voted Republican.

More ...

Crank Up the Powerpoint, Harriet

Richard B. Simon
November 5, 2005

This is hilarious.

The Washington Post reports that President Bush is calling for all White House staff to attend a series of presentations on ethics. The presentation is being made by the White House Counsel's office -- that would be Harriet Miers, the failed Supreme Court nominee who has been keeping Bush out of legal jeopardy -- both personal and official, in his terms as Texas Governor and President -- for many years.

This is his solution to the CIA leak case: Bar the doors and have his lawyer give the aides a good talkin' to.

This in lieu of actually getting rid of the people at the top whose ethical lapses have caused the mess.

Welcome to the new era of accountability.

The irony is that by appearing to require everyone in the White House to attend the sessions, he appears to be admitting that ethics problems are pervasive throughout the White House. Yet in the post-Katrina age, it should be clear to any outsider that this is a mere cosmetic measure.

And, in actuality, the sessions apply only to "West Wing Aides" with security clearances. In other words, it is the fault of the underlings. That is exactly the same thing as holding seminars on the proper treatment of prisoners for Abu Ghraib prison guards, when the orders allowing and condoning torture and humiliation came directly from the Vice President.

In addition, anyone who has closely followed the Bush Administration knows that, much of the time, what the Administration says in public is the exact diametrical opposite of what it actually does. In other words, it wouldn't be a stretch to envision these sessions as being closed-door coaching on how to testify before the jury in the eventual trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Not to mention training on how to avoid leaks to the press about what is going on inside the White House -- like, maybe, that these sessions are being used to coach White House staffers on their testimony.

But clearly, the most absurd element of this approach is the notion that "Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the 'spirit as well as the letter' of all ethics laws and rules."In matter after matter -- whether it's the outing of a CIA agent's identity, the justification and legalization of torture, the awarding of contracts to companies that do business with terrorist-sponsor states like Iran, the bogus feint at gaining U.N. approval for the invasion of Iraq, the crafting of policy by top campaign donors like Ken Lay -- and now the staging of "ethics training sessions" for underlings to distract from and cover up real ethical breaches by Top Administration Officials, it has been clear that the Real Bush Doctrine remains:

What's the least we can possibly do to appear to conform with the letter of the law and still get away with violating the spirit of the law?