Ghost Writing

UPDATE BELOW

Everyone's been waiting for the report of Gen. David Patraeus. Then we learn this:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

So, the Bush White House plans to ghost-write the much-ballyhooed Patraeus Report. The only real surprise, we suppose, is that this news is so deeply buried you have to read down to the 28th paragraph to find it.

On second thought, that shouldn't have surprised us, either. How many times has Brad Delong asked this question that goes unanswered?

UPDATE

Greg Sargent was wondering "whether the big news orgs would continue describing the imminent September Iraq progress report as representing solely the word of General Petraeus... ." Now he knows:

Well, we now have our first major failure of that test, and fittingly, it's The Washington Post's editorial page, which at this point is devoting its powerful opinion-shaping real estate to little more than a rearguard effort to salvage what's left of the reputations of Beltway war supporters. And not only does WaPo's editorial page today not acknowledge that "bait and switch," it actually continues to try and maintain the fiction that the September report will represent the sole word of Petraeus.

Read Fred Hiatt's fiction for yourself, if you have the stomach.