(They Lie About Everything Department) Brad DeLong
Josh Marshall asks, "Why oh why are we ruled by these liars?" The answer: because our press lets them get away with it:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: October 17, 2004 - October 23, 2004 Archives: Last night when discussing the White House's truth-bending revisionism on Tora Bora, I wrote that I had been "pretty skeptical of the Bush team's revisionism on this count since the outlines of the Kerry critique have been a commonplace in national security and counter-terrorism circles for literally years."

You'll remember that what I'm referring to here as 'Kerry's critique' is the charge that the US let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora because we 'outsourced' the job to local warlords and militiaman. The Bush campaign is now calling that a lie. Dick Cheney says it's "absolute garbage" and the campaign has enlisted retired general and now Bush surrogate Tommy Franks to help back their case.

Now Steve Soto points out one more reason why I and other who've followed this story for years were so skeptical.

Look at the lede of this Washington Post article from April 17, 2002 ...

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

That really says it all.