How can the White House fly in the face of the public record? The level of newspeak coming from the Bush administration seems to increase in audacity (and illogic) almost daily. The State of the Union was a great example of describing failure as success with a straight face and generally getting away with it. Check out what Scott McClellan was able to say without choking--

The following material comes from The Daily Misleader archives. [See January 28, 2004.]
When asked about the issue yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan claimed the entire WMD issue was unimportant because the Bush Administration had never said Iraq was a threat. He said, "the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'" to describe the Iraqi "threat" - not the Bush Administration.

But the record shows the Administration repeatedly said Iraq was an "imminent threat." On May 7th, less than a week after the president announced the end of major combat operations, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked, "Didn't we go to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the U.S.?" He replied, "Absolutely." Similarly, in November 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a
month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" Most notably, Vice President Cheney said two days after President Bush's 2003 State of the Union that Saddam Hussein "threatens the United States of America."

Cross listed on "That's Amazing" because it is truly amazing.