Who's ghostwriting the Petraeus Report? (It's not who we thought)

This just might be the big blockbuster of summer fiction reading. At best it was gonna be based on true events, but now even that premise has been thrown out the window.

It doesn't require much reading between the lines to understand, at long last, by whom and for whom September's Iraq progress report is being written. And to absolutely no one's surprise, today's understanding is vastly different from yesterday's -- literally.

First we thought it was to be penned by General Petraeus; a mistaken but forgiveable assumption, since, after all, the report was commonly referenced as the upcoming Petraeus Report. Silly us.

No, straight from Disinformation Central, we were told the White House would do the creative writing. This development, at least, comported much more with our cynical expectations. So we settled in for a rousing September tale of slow but steady progress in Iraq, as conceived by those rugged in-the-know types: White House speechwriters.

But now we learn -- again, with a little reading between the lines -- that the White House won't actually be the author, either.

Sure, its name will be on the cover, just as John F. Kennedy's name adorned the Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage. But Ted Sorensen-like, it's the Republican Congressional minority that's doing the ghostwriting, and to it should flow most of the credit. For the White House could never pull this off without them.

I just love the way they by-pass spin and go straight to fabrication. And have no delusions, this report will be cut from whole cloth.

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