Howard Fineman has written a good piece for Newsweek’s May 27 issue on the Bush administration’s spin-control plans now that the press and Democrats are salivating over the red meat of what Bush and Co. knew about potential terrorist attacks before 9/11 (tipped by BuzzFlash).
The best part however is Fineman’s lead-in hook, which details a recent private meeting Bush had with some Republican senators right around the time the story first broke, and some off the cuff remarks he supposedly made in the “heat” of the moment. I particularly liked this recount of a recent conversation with Ariel Sharon:
He said he’d asked the Israeli leader if he really hated Yasir Arafat. Sharon had answered yes, according to the president. “I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Well, are you going to kill him?’ ” Sharon said no, to which the president said he’d replied, “That’s good.”