George Won’t Be Reading This

The president prefers spin to news by David Corn

A simple question for the president of the United States: If you don’t read the newspapers, how can you criticize the media coverage of Iraq?
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Rice has been consistently mischaracterizing and misrepresenting Iraqi matters. And she is Bush’s main source of news? No wonder he cannot get his facts straight. When Bush addressed the Filipino Congress recently, he compared the transition he wants to achieve in Iraq to the rise of democracy in the Philippines. After all, America, according to Bush, had “liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.” That observation, though, ignored the fact that the United States ruled the Philippines for five decades before granting it autonomy. Had Rice — and all the other vetters of this speech — forgotten about the Spanish-American War?