The WP newsfaker: "What is his name? What is his name? His name is Charlie Kane..."

Atrios first spotted this, and others have picked it up. Yesterday, Reuters published the following account of fighting in Diwaniya, Iraq:

[U.S. military spokesman]Bleichwehl said troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches.

(Emphasis added.) A factory? In Iraq? Producing EFPs? How embarrassing. Bush is trying to convince the world that the Iraqi insurgents get all their EFPs from those awful, awful Iranians.

So the Washington Post picked up the story and, er, well, sort of rewrote it. No more factory. Poof. It's gone; it never existed. In the revised version, EFPs are called "a particularly deadly type of device which Washington accuses Iran of supplying Iraqi militants.”

Is this the most blatant example of journalistic lying we've ever seen? No. But it's probably the most unforgivable example to appear in months.

We need a name. Just who is this Charles Foster Kane wannabe at the Post who decided to help launch a new war by rewriting the words of his journalistic betters? The American people despise George Bush. Why is the Post rewriting stories to conform with Bush's fantasies?