Changing History

And odd thing happened on the way to the last Friday dump of information out of the Bush white house...

No sooner had i posted on the administration's trial balloon to push the the September 15 deadline for political progress in Iraq to November, when Bush's spokesman (sensing the immediate push back to the plan) took to the podium at the the press corps' new media room denying the obvious with the claim: "This is not an attempt to buy more time."

"We're not trying to change -- we're not trying to sort of change the ball game."

What's even more disturbing is how the story of the latest attempt at adding extra innings to this major league game of whack-a-mole was then removed from mainstream media sources. The AP source i quoted was still googleable:

but the link takes you to an "updated" story.

CNN went so far as to replace their original story and headline with Tony Snow's revision of recent history (from earlier the same morning). The original report on CNN was clear:

General: Iraq 'surge' assessment not likely till November

The new story from the White House is (and they're stickin' to it) as reported by CNN:

Pentagon clarifies Iraq appraisal plan

General Odierno was quoted Friday morning as saying, "In order to do a good assessment I need at least until November."

Later that same morning, Tony Snow (aware that the general had already been forced to recant) offered this account: "What he said is that he would have a more robust ability to measure things in November." So is it the Pentagon's plan to deliver a bad assessment in September?

I'm not surprised that Bush & Co. tried again to escalate the Iraq war. It's also to be expected that they would put political pressure on their hand picked flag officers. But it bothers me that the original story was simply quashed.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future, George Orwell, 1984