Using public funds to buy good press for the U.S. in Iraq should surprise no one. This is essentially a page ripped from the playbook employed state side to buy favorable opinions from Armstrong Williams and to produce fake, prepackaged news reports deceptively designed to look like legitimate news reports on the No Child Left Behind Act.

It's breath-taking how shameless the Bush administration is. Having been caught employing propaganda techniques at home, they have the temerity to turn around and do the same thing in Iraq. Maybe they thought they wouldn't get caught because it was being done overseas. Or maybe, since they can't admit they ever make a mistake, they didn't learn from their experience here.

I feel a profanity laden rant coming, but I'll do my best to repress it. (I'm sure the effect the Bush administration has on my blood pressure is hastening my development of cardiovascular problems. Yet another means by which they make the health care crisis in our country worse.)

Here at Salon and in the blogosphere, I've managed to stay informed of the Bush administration's implementation of their plans by underhanded means--don't like what scientific data are telling you, defund the work that provides the data; don't like staff at the justice department offering legal opinions contrary to your intent, forbid them to comment on dubious tactics; don't like insiders making the public aware of your flawed decision-making processes, smear them--but most Americans are largely unaware of their shenanigans. With the media largely consolidated and full of co-opted, highly paid "reporters" that know which side their bread is buttered on, I despair that things like what is reported in this War Room item will ever penetrate the public conciousness.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist. The world is usually too big and too complex for any one person or group to entirely control what we see and hear, but we're awfully close to that state now thanks to our toothless media. Comedy is often our only outlet for speaking truth to power, e.g., the Daily Show. We seem more and more like the old Soviet Union (where humor was an important means of criticizing the communist party), only worse, because at least under that system people were mostly aware of the lies of the ruling elite. Here in the U.S. too many of us just seem stupified or can't be bothered to spend the time to figure out what's going on.

Once the system is so badly broken, how do you fix it without a revolution? I wish I had some answers as we seem to spiral further from a just and equitable society.

Seder treated the subject with all the seriousness that it deserves. It's nothing but a diversonary tactic on the part of the Right to distract from the real problems of the day (and, of course, to keep funds coming in from folks who are gullible enough to fall for the tactic).

The more Bush speaks in unscripted venues, the more evidence piles up showing him to be out of touch, inarticulate and one of the greatest unintentional comedians working in show business today.

I need humor to allow me to survive this administration, but I prefer others to make fun of the Bush administration than for them to do it unintentionally to themselves.

I am deeply at odds with the Bush administration on nearly every issue, but I still feel compelled to point out that the part of the transcript where he speaks of "my military" and of "transferring" the military instead of transforming it is incorrect. I just watched the video of that interview over at Crooks and Liars (twice) and he clearly says "our military" and "transform."

There's plenty to blame Bush for, but we should make sure the transcript is corrected. We don't need to give the right even a thread to grasp at with respect to our honesty.

The incorrect transcript is not the fault of Salon. They just copied the transcript that is on Fox News' web site. The low quality of the transcript is (not surprisingly) a reflection of the quality of Fox's transcribers.

John Dean is right. This administration is worse than the Nixon administration. I had hoped that the Nixon administration would be the nadir of my political experience in the U.S., but Bush and his cronies have set a new low. What will it take before the rest of the country wakes up and demands accountability from this administration? Many of us are doing what we can, but it is clear that only a large popular uprising will stop these miscreants from further abuses of power.

Like a good citizen, I have dutifully used standard legal means to oppose the Bush administration on nearly all of it's policies and have patiently worked and waited for our system to correct his excesses. No more. Although impeachment is an extraordinary legal means of reining in the chief executive, the time has come to forcefully demand this action from our representatives, whether they are Republican or Democrat. There has been ample evidence for some time that the Bush administration is not trustworthy, but we have now returned to the worst excesses of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. I urge all of Salon's readers to begin demanding impeachment proceedings against Bush. I'm certainly going to even though I live in Texas where my Senators are rubber stamps for the administration and my congressperson was provided to me by Tom Delay.

We must demand accountability from the Bush administration and begin the long and painful process of reclaiming what is right and good about the United States. The foundations of our country are being destroyed while the world is rapidly losing all respect for us and our institutions. Now is the time for citizens of our country to take it back