Timothy Noah answers the question he spent Part 1 posing last week (“Why was the yellowcake lie treated like a major news event, when the earlier lies were not?”).

The yellowcake lie landed on Page One solely because it occasioned a brief and fatal departure from the Bush White House’s press strategy of stonewalling. “Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says” read a New York Times headline on July 8. Glancing through the story, Chatterbox initially puzzled over its Page One placement. Didn’t we know already that Bush’s yellowcake line was a lie? Then Chatterbox realized that the novelty component wasn’t the lie, but the Bush administration’s admission that it had told a lie. In the Bush White House, this simply isn’t done.

Noah implies, but does not explicitly state, that he believes Ari Fleischer got sloppy because he was a war-weary short-timer. Or could Fleischer have been nursing some sort of grudge against his boss? Could it have been a deliberate parting shot? The press’ rules of engagement don’t allow the press to acknowledge a lie when they see it, unless it is an incompetent lie, in other words, unless someone contradicts themself rather than merely contradicting someone else.

Never mind that, in pretending to know that Saddam tried to buy yellowcake from Niger, Bush told a lie. His real sin was not being a pro.