According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, President Bush was unaware that his Administration had approved the sale of a London-based company that manages six U.S. ports including New York and Miami until he read about it in a newspaper.

The purchaser, Dubai Ports World is owned by the United Arab Emirates. McClellan’s revelation was conveniently delivered one day after the President had threatened to veto any attempt by a hostile Congress to prevent the $6.8 billion deal.

Earlier in the week, the story of Vice President Dick Chaney’s hunting accident; involving friend Harry Whittington was still alive as witness the covers of both TIME and Newsweek magazines.

What makes a hunting accident a national news story for more than a week?

Surely it was not the accident but the reporting of the accident that turned the issue into a metaphor for the deception and secrecy that defines the Bush Administration.

The New York Times described the possible legal charges that could be brought in the case of a hunting accident:

"Mr. Cheney could be charged with negligence, defined as failing to understand the dangers involved and disregarding them, or recklessness, defined as understanding the dangers and disregarding them”. Another metaphor, this time for the Administration’s misadventure in Iraq.

The era of deception started with U.S. claims that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell formalized those claims in a presentation to the United Nations intended to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Paul R. Pillar, former U.S. National Intelligence Officer and currently faculty member of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University in Washington puts it this way “intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive the U.S. Decision to go to war.... The U.S. Administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."

The Administration selected pieces of raw intelligence to use in its public case for war.... The best-known example was the assertion by President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was purchasing uranium in Africa. US intelligence analysts had questioned the credibility of the report making this claim… and had advised the White House not to use it publicly.

But the Administration put the claim into Mr. Bush’s State of the Union speech, referring to it as information from British sources in order to make the point without explicitly vouching for the intelligence”.

A former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV investigated reports of Iraq’s uranium purchase for the CIA and found them to be untrue. When the Administration ignored his findings, Wilson wrote a column for the New York Times accusing the Administration of ignoring his report and said the President and Vice President Chaney knew the Niger uranium intelligence was false.

Following publication of the column, the identity of his wife Valerie Plame Wilson was leaked to the press. Plame Wilson was an undercover spy for the Central Intelligence Agency. U.S. law makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an undercover agent with a U.S. intelligence agency

Wilson claims in a book "The Politics of Truth" that the leaker was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Libby has been indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges in relation to a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the case. Speculation is that senior officials in the Office of Vice President Chaney conspired to unmask Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity in order to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the Administration’s use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Mr. Chaney claims the right, as Vice President to classify and declassify information. In other words, if he thinks some piece of information should be classified, it will be withheld from the public and the media. Ordinarily, hunting accidents wouldn’t be considered classified information nor under U.S. law would an undercover agent’s identity be considered unclassified information.

Chaney did not report his hunting accident. He did not talk to the media until four days later. His host reported the incident to a Corpus Christie newspaper the day following the accident which occurred two Saturdays ago in the late afternoon. The national media did not receive the news until late Sunday afternoon, 20 hours after the fact.

Chaney’s excuse was personal trauma and concern for the victim’s family. Understandable in ordinary context but Dick Chaney is not an ordinary man. He is Vice President of the United States, the most powerful country in the world. When he screws up, he puts the world at risk. When he shows disdain for the public’s right to know, he makes people nervous about what else he is hiding.

Some Americans have demanded that the Vice-President resign because he sprayed a friend with shotgun pellets and failed to report it. Others want to stop the chatter before it gains momentum. “If Dick Chaney resigns, George W. Bush would become President”.

There is great irony in this saga. When the victim, Harry Whittington was released from hospital, he felt compelled to apologize to Vice President Cheney and his family for all they had endured - this from a man who was shot by the Vice President and suffered a mild heart attack as a result of the shooting.

Mr. Whittington described the situation as "a cloud of misfortune and sadness that is not easy to explain, especially to those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting".

To wit: Jon Stewart’s (host of television lampoon the ‘Daily Show’) interview with a fake "firearms mishap analyst, who told him:

"The Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the bush."