Secrets and lies, or, how President

Bush flew in and out of Baghdad unscathed:

President Bush's spirit-lifting

Thanksgiving visit to our troops in Baghdad was a bold and brave move.

Air Force One is a rather large target and you can't expect it to

go unnoticed, even under cover of night.

Iraqi rebels supposedly have

rocket launchers to attack aircraft, so squeezing that jumbo jet through

Iraqi airspace had to be a jittery proposition at best.

So yes, it was brave for the

President to visit our troops there.

But from a news media standpoint,

the President's staff dropped the ball big time. While certain reporters

were invited to tag along, others were left out in the cold.

The have-nots were told that

Bush would spend Thanksgiving dinner at his ranch in Texas and nothing

newsworthy was on the horizon. So that's what they reported, some

even going so far as to say what was on the menu at the Bush household

for the holiday feast.

Is it good for the president's

representatives to lie to the media, who funnel information to the American

public? No, and an apology to the jilted reporters and the American people

would be in order.

Granted, the kibosh was on

to prevent leaks for security reasons. That's totally understandable.

Even the press agents who misinformed reporters supposedly had no idea

of the president's plans. So they weren't technically lying.

A senior White House official

in the know, however, could have stopped the lies or, better yet, figured

a fair way to give all the reporters a fair shot at the story without

jeopardizing the security of the mission.

Did the White House pick and

choose only reporters it trusted to keep the secret? Quite likely.

Then again, a reporter for

the Washington Post was along for the ride, although Bush reportedly thinks

the Post has it in for him over the war. CNN was left out but Fox News

was there, ostensibly because this was Fox's turn in the pool. The

pool is a rotating group of reporters who follow the president everywhere

he goes because the president is always news.

Reporters selected to make

the trip on Air Force One to Baghdad weren't allowed to tell their

editors or their families where they were going or why. They weren't

even allowed to file their stories until Air Force One was well on its

way