White House Web Scrubbing :Dana Milbank

[jbfam4]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By Dana Milbank

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003

It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.


White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.

[grannylib]

1. And I bet they are scrubbing "imminent threat" to change it to "emerging"

and all the talk of WMDs will be changed to "WMD programs"

God how stupid do they think we are???

[tom_paine]

2. As stupid as Soviets, as stupid as any who knuckled under

the bootheel of an unelected dictator or Emperor.

Stupid as Nazi Germans, stupid as the Haitians who groveled beneath Baby Doc's feet, stupid as the Filips who took what Ferdinand Marcos was dishe=ing out, stupid as citizens of the Roman Republic falling at the feet of Julius Caeser, never realizing that Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero were coming from such posioned roots.

That's how stupid they think the Imperial Subjects of Amerika are.

And my greatest fear is that they might be right.

[Beetwasher]

3. Indeed. It's Happening Right Before Our Very Eyes

How could it happen?! We're seeing it in action...

[librechik]

4. WTF--the Google cached versions disppeared too?

that's a long reach--sorry they woke up to that option!

[tom_paine]

5. Scary, isn't it?

In 30 years, Orwell's vision will be FULLY FUFILLED.