Reply #3: You're right, it's a long article, [View All]

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20 minutes doesn't even do it justice, but it is very informative.

I am surprised to see no mention of WHIG, the group created as sort of a "sales team" to sell the Iraq war. The White House Iraq Group seems to have slipped under the radar of most media - I have no idea how I stumbled across it.

Educating the Public

Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

The first days of September would bring some of the most important decisions of the prewar period: what to demand of the United Nations in the president's Sept. 12 address to the General Assembly, when to take the issue to Congress, and how to frame the conflict with Iraq in the midterm election campaign that began in earnest after Labor Day.

A "strategic communications" task force under the WHIG began to plan speeches and white papers. There were many themes in the coming weeks, but Iraq's nuclear menace was among the most prominent.

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I would post more, but there are restrictions here I try to stay inside of. it really DOES piss me off though when "paragraphs " contain only one sentence - oh well

OH, and the inferences of that particular name for the "group" creating the acronym "whig" didn't escape me

BUT, I don't think that they checked the dictionary for the definition before they did so. I did, and one of the definitions is dead-on accurate in describing the Republican Party as it exists today, especially the last 5 words.

WHIG: A 19th-century American political party formed to oppose the Democratic Party and favoring high tariffs and a loose interpretation of the Constitution.

I'm not as polite as the dictionary.

The US Administration is blatantly twisting, ignoring, and raping the Constitution whenever they feel like it. And that appears to be 24/7.