Look out, everyone, the White House has a new catch-phrase. “Stay the course” didn’t work out too well, and “they stand up, we stand down” was a policy flop, but now the vaunted White House communications team has a new one.<\/p>\n
“The interim report is the beginning of a new kind of surge and it’s a surge of facts<\/b>, because what’s happened with a lot of the war in Iraq, as you know, Rush, is that people get pictures of dead bodies, but they don’t get any sense of what’s actually going on on the ground,” Tony Snow told<\/a> Rush Limbaugh yesterday, adding, “[W]e need a surge in facts<\/b>.”<\/p>\n Snow then hosted a conference call<\/a> with conservative bloggers.<\/p>\n “We need a surge of facts<\/strong>. That’s one of the things we’re going to be working on. I’m going to be doing it from the podium…. So far we have had very few visuals to confirm what Americans want to believe. We have an amazing and heroic American military… The only way to change public opinion [on Iraq] is to present a fuller, more nuanced and more accurate picture.”<\/p>\n “We’re gonna present bad news too. You have to… But it’s a miracle anyone supports the war, based on the characterizations that have been painted.”<\/p>\n Snow says he’s going to put up slides, video, and audio on new screens behind him during the daily press briefing. “We’re not gonna spin, but we’re going to provide real hard data.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can’t believe Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are off this week. Some of this material just writes itself. * With the war in its fifth year, why did the White House wait until now to start “providing real hard data”?<\/p>\n * What does this say about the data the Bush gang has offered up until now?<\/p>\n * Will the “real hard data” include information about al Qaeda’s role in Iraqi violence, even though it contradicts the president’s talking points?<\/p>\n * Will the data resemble the bogus and exaggerated success stories<\/a> from the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report?<\/p>\n * Snow now says, “We’re not gonna spin.” Can we get that in writing?<\/p>\n
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\nIn the meantime, I have a few questions.<\/p>\n