Frank Rich on the lying liars who lie for the Bush Administration.

Frank Rich: Operation Iraqi Infoganda: "The 'news' of the war included its fictionalized Rambo, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, and its fictionalized conclusion, the 'Mission Accomplished' celebration led by the president on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. (Mr. Bush said that the premature victory banner was the handiwork of the ship's crew when in fact it was the product of the White House scenic shop.) But for all that fake news, we still don't know such real news as how many Iraqi civilians were killed as we gave them their freedom. We are still shielded from images of American casualties, before or after they are placed in coffins.

Now that the breakdown in pre-9/11 security is threatening to dominate the real news, the administration is working overtime to overwhelm it with its latest, thematically related fake story line. Time magazine reports that employees of the Department of Homeland Security have been given the goal of providing the president 'with one homeland-security photo-op a month.' The Associated Press reports that the department is also hiring a 'liaison to the entertainment industry' — with a salary as high as $136,000, plus benefits — 'to make sure that dramatic portrayals of it are as accurate as possible.' (The deadline for applications, do note, is tomorrow.) Of course 'accurate' in that job description should be read as 'inaccurate,' since the liaison's real task, like that of the intrepid reporter Karen Ryan, will be to make sure that any actual news of our homeland security's many holes is kept on the q.t. According to E! entertainment news, we can even expect a new TV show, 'D.H.S. — the Series,' to which both Mr. Bush and Tom Ridge will contribute endorsements and sound bites.

When it comes to homeland security, you can be sure that the administration's faux news will always be good news — though this is the one story in which the real news can sometimes become just too intrusive to ignore.
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