White House Says Your Ears are Lying

You did not see what you thought you saw.  You did not hear what you thought you heard.  And 1+1=3 for reasonably large values of 1.

Alberto Gonzales?  Not a liar.

The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now.

While you might have thought you heard Gonzales contradict his own previous testimony, this did not occur.

"He has testified truthfully and tried to be very accurate," the chief White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said of Mr. Gonzales’s testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You may have thought you heard FBI director Robert Mueller completely contradict a section of Gonzales' testimony.  This did not happen.

Mr. Snow said repeatedly that Mr. Gonzales had not been contradicted by Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, as has been widely reported, on whether there were serious disagreements within the Bush administration on its secret surveillance program.

The White House could tell you what you actually heard, but then they would have to kill you.

In insisting that there was no real contradiction between the officials' accounts, Mr. Snow said Mr. Gonzales was just not able to explain further "because to do so would compromise American security."

That is all.