In this issue, we are not publishing our regular “Controlling the News” because we have received, from a reporter, a number of comments and observations on life in the Bush White House that we feel are of considerable importance. There have been a growing number of comments about the persona of George Bush. Paul O’Neil, his Secretary of the Treasury and others have written about the difficulties of communicating with the President.

Excerpts added since April 28^th, 2004:

“Thank you for publishing my comments. Since you put these up on your website, there has been a kind of private, muted panic in the White House. The Bush Gestapo is determined to find out who I am. Fortunately, I am not a staff member but now I understand the WH is getting the FBI into the act to do a computer linguistic check on my comments to compare these with articles I might have written. (Way to go with the tax dollars, Karl!)”

“You ought to look into the incident when Bush got a nasty, deep cut on his head when he “fell off the couch while watching a football game.” Did he land on the dog? Bush is known to fall down from time to time, according to [redacted] for “no apparent reason at all.”

“Yesterday, a senior staff member cornered me in the press room and wanted to show me that he had no cross under his coat lapel. I asked him why he was doing this and he replied that some “psycho” in the White House was “spreading lies” to the media. When I asked him where this had appeared, and took out my trusty notebook, he shut up and went off to pray somewhere.”

“Latrine rumor has it that a new memo is coming out, strictly prohibiting any “non-assigned personnel” from entering into any White House office except by specific invitation and then with a “guide.” So much for the Jesus wallpaper. Everywhere but the lavatory. One of my irreverent colleagues scrawled up something bad about the Prez on a wall over one of the staff urinals and now these are under 24 hour video surveillance. Makes certain bodily practices very embarrassing.”

“When Sharon was here, [redacted] told me that Bush basically asked him what he wanted and then gave it to him. No quid pro quo and Foggybottom (Department of State. Ed) folks were livid.”

‘One of the jokes here is about the Fabulous Bush twins. They are not to be talked about because they are following in Dad’s uncertain footsteps. What a family. Two of the children are drunks and the niece is a raging drug addict who was selling crack in the halfway house in Florida! I told my editor I was having fun but I would rather cover drying paint. It’s less dangerous, let me advise you. By the way, all calls outside the White House are tapped and taped.”

“My colleague from the Mickey Mouse channel has been telling a great story, but outside the White House. In one of the top Presidential aide’s offices, on the wall, are three big pictures. One, in the center, is a colored picture of an Aryan Jesus flanked left and right by smirking portraits of Bush and Cheney. Our commentator refers to this tableaux as Christ between the Two Thieves!”

“ Great compliment paid to me  by E. Bumuller from the NYT. She wrote a comfort piece in direct refutation of what you published from me. Even used my phrase “de facto” president about Cheney. According to Tin Lizzie, why George is really running the show! And Cheney obeys the master. Sure he does. ‘Once a newspaperman, always a whore.’ “

“You might find this interesting but I know you won’t publish it. Congoleeza Rice is such a smug bitch. She tells the Bush what he wants to hear but maybe she wouldn’t be so snotty if she knew what I, and others, know about her. Here goes. She was on the staff at Stanford University some years ago. She and Bob Conquest from Hoover Institution were “experts” on communism. She was also the Dean of Women and as a flaming dyke, she pushed this “date rape” nonsense. “Date rape” at Stanford was when some stud took out an ugly woman, laid her and then decided she was butt-ugly and ditched her. The forsaken one went wailing to Congoleeza and the stud got jerked up before the Committee and ragged because he “raped” this poor, trusting slut and then dumped her. Many threats of expulsion but never happened. Stanford didn’t want to give up the fat tuition money from dad. And now we have to put up with this creature running our brain-damaged spastic President and strutting around the corridors of power like a New Orleans whoremadam. See? I know you won’t publish this, will you?”

“Saw a long, official report from the Pentagon today. [Redacted] gave me a quick peek at it before it went back into the safe. If the Bush gets another four years, we are going to have a universal draft come January 2005. Bush’s State of the Union speech is being drafted now (he couldn’t write out a shopping list) in which he intones that a new, democratic, draft is necessary to combat the war on terrorism (which he and his friends have been actively encouraging by their brainless actions). The gist of this is that every young American, male and female, will be drafted at 18 and will serve two years. No deferments for school (like Cheney who lived on these evasions) and no allowance for children either. Flat out universal service. Medical exemptions may have to be granted but if the sick one is well enough to sit at a desk, he gets to work in an office typing out forms all day. And I mean everyone goes! I assume Adolf Bush wants to stand in front of the White House surrounded by bayonets, and salute the goose stepping  new Hitler Youth on their way to enforce Greater America!”

“The entire WH staff is in a boil over the Iraqi prisoner torture issue. If the storm doesn’t calm down, someone in Authority has to leave the scene and it won’t be the President. Rumsfeld is walking on a soda cracker bridge in a rainstorm and may have to bite the bullet. There is an election this year and Bush likes the job. We know here that the entire WH was well aware of the abuses, long, long ago and did nothing. The general opinion here is that these are just a bunch of filthy heathen ragheads who blew up the WTC and ought to die just for fun. The senior aides of the Administration are bitterly contemptuous of Muslims, calling them outcasts and the followers of Satan! We have such lovely, tolerant Christians loose in the White Zoo that you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Here we have some more follow-up on the prisoner atrocity scandal. One of my contacts here filled me in at dinner yesterday…outside the White House. Apparently some kind of electronic listening devises have been either activated or installed inside the building, but only in the clerical offices…not in the senior aides’ areas. So we meet outside the building for security. This brutality towards Iraqi prisoners is far, far worse than anyone can imagine. Prisoners, both men and women, were repeatedly humiliated, sexually assaulted, (homosexually raped by gay and sadistic US Army personnel and women prisoners repeatedly beaten and raped by the straight guards) beaten, tortured and more than a few outright murdered by their sadistic guards. Some of these guards were just stupid and brutal military thugs but others, the more scientific ones, were either “private contractors” (i.e. the private gestapo killers the Bush people have put in place to protect the military from criminal investigations and possible punishment), MI personnel and also a number of sinister CIA people. Notice how a few ill-trained reservists are being blamed while the CIA, private contractors and MI “experts” have vanished off the screen. It is always thus. Shit runs downhill, especially in this business. This abuse was not a suddenly discovered atrocity. It has been known for at least six months. The head of the International Red Cross personally informed Bush and Rumsfeld of this at the end of last year. Nothing was done. Then, with a number of outraged soldiers informing their superiors, word of this got out in the White House as early as January of this year. Rumsfeld knew from the very beginning what was going on and in detail. He did nothing at all. In fact, Rumsfeld, on orders from On High, did his best to suppress all of this. Threats and promises were made but too many people knew about it and no one wanted to get caught covering this up. Pictures and videos are now all over the place (I saw one video that made me want to throw up. As a Jew, all of this is too close to home for me to enjoy.) This is how Bush was informed at the beginning of February and is typical of how things go around here. The President does not read newspapers or watch news on television. He gets whatever news his staff deems fit and proper from them after careful vetting. Bush has a strictly limited attention span and dislikes complicated issues. Rice and Rove package the news and give it to him verbally during very short daily briefing sessions. If there is something very disturbing, like this prisoner torture issue, it is slipped in with more palatable items. In this case, the person who typed up the briefing paper told me specifically that the torture and killing story was wedged in between a phony story about Bremer’s brilliant successes in winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and some very positive, and thoroughly doctored, figures abut the victories of the military over the handful of fanatics disrupting Iraqs progress towards democracy. And this is a direct quote: “There was a small problem with escaping Iraqi prisoners who attacked their guards and some were shot during the rioting. They have had to really crack down on some of these hardcore Saddam loyalists in there but everything is under control now.” That is an exact quote from the briefing paper. Of course Bush, with his Swiss cheese memory (full of holes) probably didn’t even register this and if he did, forgot about it ten minutes later. That’s how it’s done around here. ‘The President is never to be fed a diet of depressing news…we need to keep him informed but not agitated…’ Maybe someday, I will write a book but who will publish it? I’m afraid that pretty soon, the White House ushers will be given new black uniforms and big, shiny black boots to wear. And they will stick out their right arms and chant, ‘Heil Jesus!’ If this wasn’t so frightening, it might be something from Comedy Central.”