Responsibility: A Capital Minuet

Dana Milbank -- For President Bush and the press corps that covers him, the month of July has been one long cat-and-mouse game. Five times, questioners have invited the president to take responsibility for the Iraq-uranium allegation that found its way into his State of the Union address. Five times, Bush has deflected the question.

Later, he reports on one White House smear counterattack -

The White House reacted with indignation when ABC News broadcast a report from Iraq with soldiers complaining about their mission. Conservative Internet gossip Matt Drudge said that a White House operative told him the ABC report's author was a gay Canadian, an apparent effort, denied by the White House, to discredit the report. Drudge said the ABC report had become "talk radio fodder" for liberal media bias.

But the very same day of the ABC broadcast, a similar report went largely unnoticed. The source: The July 15 European edition of Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper. The paper quoted Sgt. Robert Page in Germany saying it was "too late" for Bush to promise not to overextend the military. "Right now we're only 50 percent staffed where I work because of all the deployments." Air Force Staff Sgt. Tom Yingling borrowed a phrase from Vice President Cheney, saying, "We are already overstretched -- big time."

"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, July 21.