GOVERNMENT'S DECEIT IS NOTHING NEW

Wasn't it a little disingenuous to feign shock at the President Bush's
proposal for an Office of Strategic Influence ("Intelligence failure," Our
Opinion, March 3), when the U.S. news media has even gone so far as to
accept taxpayer's funding for publishing erroneous propaganda under the
auspices of America's War on Drugs?

Considering the decades-old policy of providing our citizens
government-concocted "facts" to support the drug war, which, more often
than not, fly in the face of science and common sense, how do we separate
truth from fiction? With such a long history of deceit during the other
war, how do we know when they're telling us the truth?

One hopes Washington and the nation's press haven't squandered their
credibility, crying wolf once too often during the drug war debacle,
because these terrorists appear to be a real threat to our people. But then
again, whom can we believe?

Mike Plylar Kremmling, Colo.