Yet more (albeit silly) proof that White House officials believe they can continue to lie with impunity. On my Wednesday commute I heard an NPR report on Bush’s address to the American General Contractors Association, where he answered a question about his veto of the latest war funding bill from Congress with a classic Bushism, “I’m the Commander Guy”. NPR played the audio, I chuckled, Bush lost a few more credibility points and that’s the end of story.. not quite.

During a White House Press Briefing today spokeswoman Dana Perino insisted that, no, Bush said “I’m a commander guy”, and furthermore that the comment should be interpreted to mean that Bush ‘listens to commanders on the ground, not politicians in Washington’.

Could I, along with the entire press corps and the official stenographer really have mis-heard Bush’s remark? I went looking for the audio and found the video instead. No doubt about it, he IS “the Commander Guy” and that is clearly what he meant. Update: YouTube version with boosted audio.

Yet Perino went on to say that she raised the issue with the official stenographers, they re-listened to the audio, and oh-my-gosh, Perino was right and the official record now reflects “I’m a commander guy”. Wow, publicly re-write history to suit your intended message, never mind the audio and video recordings and the recollections of the entire press corp present at the briefing.

If the press has any credibility they’ll step up to the plate and challenge the White House on this, but I won’t hold my breath. Furthermore, if stenographers have a professional ethics board, these guys better be sanctioned.

 

Tags: Bush, Commander+Guy, Dana+Perino, Iraq+War, JP+Oliva

Posted under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.