LOCKHART NAILS IT

Joe Lockhart, former White House spokesman under President Bill Clinton, says the Bush administration's deception to maintain secrecy about his campaign trip to visit troops Baghdad was warranted, there is a bigger issue at stake.

"My problem with this is not that he misled the press," Lockhart tells Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post. "This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop."

Sort of like Bush in a flight suit aboard an aircraft carrier, or his grandstanding in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner weeks ago.