"This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations," notes John Dean. "Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless. The report - entitled 'Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy' - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress."

Alastair Campbell, the top spin doctor for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has announced his resignation amid continuing controversy over his role in building the case for war with Iraq. Nicknamed England's "real deputy prime minister," Campbell said his family had paid a heavy price for the "real and intense" pressures of his job. He will be replaced by David Hill, a PR executive at Bell-Pottinger Communications and managing director of Good Relations ltd, which has represented Monsanto.

"For most Americans, August is a time for summer vacation. For members of Congress, their aides and some lobbyists, it's a time for privately sponsored junkets," the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes. "This month, for example, 20 members of Congress jetted to London for a week-long visit in which they delved into such issues as trade, terrorism and foreign affairs. These politicians had no fear of getting lonely, however: More than 100 lobbyists accompanied them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post." The trip, sponsored by the Republican Ripon Educational Fund, is free for the congressional contingent. The lobbyists -- representing corporations like American Express, AOL Time Warner, Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Motors and Hewlett-Packard -- pay their own way plus Ripon annual membership fees of $9,500.

"If the first Iraq war of 1991 was dubbed Desert Storm , the second might be called Perfect Storm," writes Lance Bennett, professor of political science at University of Washington. "The run-up to the 2003 war witnessed an extraordinary convergence of factors that produced near-perfect journalistic participation in government propaganda operations. ... On a scale from one to ten -- if 'one' is rigorously sceptical and 'ten' supine -- Perfect Storm scored ten out of ten, far exceeding the already impressive levels of press complicity achieved in the first Iraq war. ... This time, the level of mediated public deliberation was so diminished as to make the preponderance of journalism little more than an instrumental extension -- a sort of propaganda helper -- of the strategic communication goals of the administration. With few notable exceptions, the press took a pass on its fourth estate prerogatives. Posing the hard questions, testing the administrations logic and execution at every point, remaining sceptical -- all this was drowned in a sea of waving flags and gung-ho celebrations of military technology." Bennett itemizes the "top ten factors that created this perfect propaganda storm," which include "9/11 happened," "Master scripting and directing by Karl Rove," and "The Fox Effect."