Semi-Daily Journal

Truth Is Simply Not on the List of Options, Part LXI

Why does the Bush administration lie about everything? Why is truth not even an option that is ever considered? I mean, for Condi Rice to say over the weekend that the NSC Iraq Stabilization Group had been "devised... together with Dick Cheney... Colin Powell... and Mr Rumsfeld in August" and for Rumsfeld to say today that he had never heard of it is simply weird, in a pathetic way.

FT.com Home US: The Bush administration's shake-up of its policymaking structure for Iraq was over-shadowed on Wednesday by an admission from the White House that Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary in charge of reconstruction, had not been consulted. Backtracking on the assurances he made at the beginning of the week that Mr Rumsfeld had been "very involved in this process", Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday: "Maybe I should not have characterised it that way."

Mr Rumsfeld told the Financial Times on Tuesday he had not learnt of the Iraq Stabilization Group, a new co-ordinating body headed by Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, until he received a classified memo from her. Mr Rumsfeld said he had not been briefed beforehand.

Speaking at a press conference on the first day of a gathering of Nato ministers on Wednesday, Mr Rumsfeld said he was not upset with Ms Rice over the handling of the restructuring, but again asserted the memo would not change administration decision-making.

He noted that Paul Bremer, the US-appointed administrator in Iraq, would still report to the Pentagon and sought to play down Ms Rice's initiative. "I'm really quite surprised by all the froo-frah about this memo," he said. "It's a little, short, one-page memo."

Mr Rumsfeld again acknowledged that he had not been brought into the process of forming the new group before it was established. But he said more junior officials at the Pentagon had been told about the reorganisation. "I get three or four memos from the NSC a day," he said.

Ms Rice had told the New York Times over the weekend that she had devised the new group together with Dick Cheney, vice-president, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, and Mr Rumsfeld in August. On Wednesday Mr McClellan said that while Mr Rumsfeld was not consulted prior to issuing the memo, Mr Bremer had been...