Cheney Unleashed

"After he finished a stint as spokesman for a crisis-ridden FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, Mark Pfeifle headed straight for the White House and the hottest Republican campaign going: President Bush's effort to beat back Democratic charges that he lied the country into war.

"Pfeifle's specialty is damage control. . . .

"The operation has all the trappings of a political campaign -- including rapid-response statements targeted at opponents, using carefully compiled research. . . .

"Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director, coordinates the memos along with rapid-response whiz Matthew McDonald and Michele Davis, a deputy national security adviser for communications. Wallace, who ran Bush's campaign communications operation, has tapped other party veterans including Pfeifle and Brian Walton, a former Commerce Department spokesman, to create what one aide called a 'new product or tool' in the White House public relations arsenal."

Fact Checking

There's another way all this feels like a presidential campaign again. The lead stories in most newspapers mostly just report whatever was said the previous day by the various partisans, with a dollop of analysis regarding who's winning and who's losing. But at the same time, the major news outlets are gradually doing some fact-checking.

The Washington Post did some Saturday. The New York Times did some Tuesday.

Today, James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay weigh in for Knight Ridder Newspapers, writing that "in accusing Iraq war critics of 'rewriting history,' Bush, Cheney and other senior administration officials are tinkering with the truth themselves.

"The administration's overarching premise is beyond dispute - administration officials, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and even leaders of foreign governments believed intelligence assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That intelligence turned out to be wrong.

"But Bush, Cheney, and other senior officials have added several other arguments in recent days that distort the factual record. Below, Knight Ridder addresses the administration's main assertions."

Here's on example:

"ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that 'more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence - voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.'

"CONTEXT: This isn't true."