AP once cozy with Rove: "Keep up the fight"

By GottaLaff

Chumminess between the press and the gestapo. How appropriate:

In its investigation of the misleading accounts that initially surrounded Pat Tillman's death and Jessica Lynch's rescue the House Oversight Committee on Monday shed some light on the White House's press-management apparatus and the chummy relationship between Karl Rove and AP scribe Ron Fournier.

It's good to have friends. Always be kind to your pals, because there's no telling how they'll repay the favor.

In the day's after Tillman's death, on April 22, 2004, the committee examined e-mails from the White House's communications team, including some exchanges with reporters.

Commentators and reporters contacted the White House to offer advice. For example, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan e-mailed the White House’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, recommending that he “find out what faith Tillman practiced and have the president go by that church and light a candle or say a prayer.” Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line “H-E-R-O.” In response to Mr. Fournier’s e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, “How does our country continue to produce men and women like this,” to which Mr. Fournier replied, “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.”

How patriotic and devoted. I- I think I'm tearing up. Who could ever fault a message like that?

The 51-page examination reveals a White House more interested in crafting a good story around Tillman and Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch, whose capture and rescue in the early days of the Iraq war was dramatized in official White House and Pentagon pronouncements.

Our nation also has an inviolate obligation to share truthful information with a soldier’s family and the American people should injury or death occur....

That standard was not met in either Corporal Tillman’s or Private Lynch’s cases.

My head is spinning from the vastness of the bottomless sack of wrong that this government has produced.

White House staff exchanged more than 200 e-mails concerning Tillman's death, according to the Oversight Committee report (.pdf).

Okay, break over. Back to racism.