I Summon the Ghost of Rosemary Woods Shockingly enough, someone from the press managed to both catch and report the Bush Administration deleting embarassing information it had previously made public. Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment Remark to Saudi About War's Certainty Is Not in Internet Transcript of Interview The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq. At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen. The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended. Pentagon officials omitted the discussion of the meeting from a transcript of the Woodward interview that they posted on the Defense Department's Web site Monday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing yesterday that he may have used the phrase "take that to the bank" but that no final decision had been made to go to war. "To my knowledge, a decision had not been taken by the president to go to war at that meeting," Rumsfeld said. "There was certainly nothing I said that should have suggested that, and any suggestion to the contrary would not be accurate." Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen." The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too." All told, the Pentagon transcript omits a series of eight questions and answers, some of them just a few words each. Yesterday Rumsfeld described the deleted passages as "some banter." Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz denied Woodward's claim about improper fund diversions. And we all know Wolfowitz has no reason to be deceptive do we not? Key parsing of words noted in bold: In testimony yesterday, Wolfowitz said that the U.S. Central Command had prepared a $750 million contingency plan for Iraq by July 2002. He said that the Pentagon had earmarked $241 million of the total before Congress voted for an Iraq war resolution in October 2002. But the money, he said, went only "to strengthen our capabilities in the region," and "no funding was made available for those things that had Iraq as the exclusive purpose." The administration, Wolfowitz said, had tried "scrupulously" to live up to reporting requirements to Congress. Nevertheless, the Woodward account has spurred concerns about the nearly unprecedented flexibility Congress gave the Pentagon over counterterrorism funds. Yesterday, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), a Democrat who has strongly backed the goals of the Iraq war and is a strong supporter of the Defense Department, indicated that he was disturbed by the report. "They had all kinds of flexibility, but in this case as far as I can tell, there was no consultation," he said. Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) said this week that "the administration owes Congress a full, detailed and immediate accounting." But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said late yesterday that the Wolfowitz testimony and Pentagon briefings had assuaged his concerns. "At this point I think the matter has been fully responded to," he said. [Ed: Attaturk stop snickering! You can't see him ladies and gentlemen but he is being very rude with his snickering at the moment.] Warner said he had no plans to do anything further. He said committee records indicate the panel received briefings on the use of defense funds in 2003 on Feb. 13, Feb. 23 and April 4. However, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said there would be hearings into possible fund diversions and "the mechanics of moving money around." In the words of a poorly closeted, fedora wearing, HTML moron...Developing...