How many times have you read the phrase “An unnamed senior administration official…” over the past 8 years? It seems like every day, in almost every news story emanating from the White House, someone from the inside the Bush administration (who won’t go on record) is prominently quoted in the context of either a personal smear against an anti-Bushbot, or propaganda catapulting:

The smear spin:

…The first evidence of Rove’s involvement in the Katrina disaster occurred on Tuesday afternoon. “Rove understood what a nightmare this was for the president,” Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, “so he went into high gear on the spin thing they’re so good at in the White House…

Rove sold the [Katrina narrative], as he had in the past, through the media. On Wednesday, while Blanco was trying to get help from the White House, her staff began receiving calls from reporters questioning her handling of the disaster, almost all of them citing as their sources unnamed senior White House officials…

Arming the propaganda catapult:

…In the early stages of the war, when the Bush administration was being criticized for its failure to prevent the looting of the Saddam Hussein regime’s arms depots, Bush officials downplayed the importance of the weapons that disappeared. In October 2004, an unnamed senior administration official was quoted by CNN as saying that the weapons were “stuff you can buy anywhere.” …

You? Anywhere?? Apparently, even you can run right down to K-Mart and buy a Soviet made T7 rocket propelled grenade launcher — tell ‘em an “unnamed senior administration official” sent you! Think about that the next time you hear a scratchy speaker inviting you to peruse a “blue light special in the arms department!”…

…Only 499 of the 2,389 Soviet-made RPGs that were provided to the new Iraqi security forces could actually be accounted for through serial numbers, according to a report by the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office in November — and that was because they were still in the warehouse. No one knows how many of the other 1,900 RPGs entered the Iraqi arms market…

Sure we do - nearly all of them - just like when the U.S. armed Saddam for years and years and years while he was Poppy Bush’s anti-Iran buddy. al-Qaqaa, anyone?

Feel free to quote me on that.

(The real reason I wrote this post was to highlight the Salon links to the articles cited above. Both are very revealing, and well worth the time invested in reading…if you’re going to the beach this weekend, print them out before you go…when you come back on Monday, email Nancy Pelosi and ask her to put impeachment back on the table.)