The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

The other half of "Woodstein" weighs in and he's not following his former partner.

From what I have seen, the above is the way this group handles things, lie and decceive, and either hope something else blows up to distract from the crisis du jour, or blow something up to create a fresh crisis du jour causing people to stop paying attention to the rank odor emanating from yesterday's crisis du jour. That's my opinion of the goings on at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, others may disagree. What I don't think anyone can disagree with is, by plan or accident, yesterday's problems don't get solved, they get swept out of the public eye by a new problem popping up.

Here's a SHORT list of such problems. Bush drops Kyoto, Cheney's energy group, California and the Enron created energy crisis, Stem cell research blocked, 9/11, USAPATRIOT, the sealing of all presidential records without the approval of the sitting president, Privatising Social Security comes up, unilateral withdraw from ABM treaty (without congressional approval), Camp X-Ray opens at Gitmo, the Gonzalez torture memo, the failed Venezuelan coup, Bin Laden escapes Tora Bora, backing out of the World Court, Domestic spying ok'd by Ashcroft, "Premptive War," Jose Padilla, Harvey Pitt and the SEC, Saddm and WMDs, Bush decides to go to war (August of 2002), North Korean nukes, Kissenger named for September 11 commission, Kissenger bails, Paul O'Neill, and that's just the lowlights of 01-02, the full list is much longer and thicker, but you get the idea.

(Thanks to Craig Aaron's list at http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1539/ for lowlights and doesn't even cover the things that we've found out since the 04 election, like who authorized the 02 New Hampshire disenfrachisement, fun with Dick and Scooter and Joe and Valerie, domestic spying by the NSA, etc.)