“The President Wants To Say We’re Winning!”

Ackerman highlights this passage from Speech-Less, Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer's memoir:

When Marc [Thiessen] was writing remarks on the war in Iraq, he tried to browbeat a CIA analyst who was unwilling to state unequivocally that America was winning in the war on terror. “The president wants to say we’re winning!” Marc thundered.

Just what we needed — another accusation that the Bush White House wanted to politicize intelligence.

And that's his basic position on interrogation: "The President Wants To Say We're Not Torturing!" So he goes out and says it. He's a political propagandist who graduated from the schools of Jesse Helms and Dick Cheney.

So why is he now given a weekly column at the Washington Post? As if that paper's implosion wasn't obvious enough? Are there really no actual writers or independent thinkers available?