Politics - The Administration's Spin Cycle Never Stops
So the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, and now the President have all gone on record acknowledging that there was no link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and 9/11, apparently in an effort to spin some earlier comments made by the Vice President about ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune asks: “So why do seven in 10 Americans believe there is a link? Is it just their wild imaginings? Nope: It's because the White House planted the idea and has cultivated it assiduously for months”. Read the whole editorial here.

But they never actually came out and said it. They may have implied it in every way possible, and there seems to have been no shortage of off-the-record suggestions that Saddam and Al Qaeda were intimately involved. But the right level of plausable deniability was maintained.

Robert Scheer writes: “The pattern is clear: Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar. It is really quite ingenious in its cynical effectiveness”. I don't agree with the rest of Scheer's article, but he gets this point exactly right.

This doesn't just apply to Iraq. Take tax cuts, for instance. Spinsanity debunks the latest spin on this topic. Take WMD's. Oh, but we're still looking for those.

So the question I have is this: When does a pattern of constant manipulation and dissembling in the media come to be regarded as fundamentally dishonest? Where's the dividing line between doctoring the spin and lying?