NYT- National House of Waffles( blasts the white house)

[Room101]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/opinion/13DOWD.html

The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George Tenet, but it smells of mendacity.

(snips)

they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war.

Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.)

(snips)

When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this "evidence" could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it.

....a higher power wanted it in.

And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful.

[AnnabelLee]

1. Whoa

They're even hitting 'em with stonewalling the 911 investigation!

[IndianaGreen]

4. Coming from Maureen Dowd

who was among those "enablers" of the war on Iraq, this is highly significant. The press smells blood, and ratings!

[hedda_foil]

2. Woohoo! Look at this part!

Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers.

Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war.

Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.)

[ClintonTyree]

3. MoDo...........

Hits the nail right on the head. My only hope is that the good puppy press doesn't let this slide, that they finally come to life and do what they're paid to do. No "case closed"; show the country what murdering thieves these jackasses are.

[gulliver]

5. Loved this line...

"The Bush administration has known all along that the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam's weapons and the Al Qaeda connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose."

:-)

Other than that wry line, this was an unusually serious MoDo editorial. She wasn't going for clever or funny as much as usual. Just plain gloves off. I loved it.