President Bush, smarting from attacks on the administration by George Tenet, signed an order today requiring booksellers to expunge thirteen pages from Tenet’s book, “At the Center of the Storm.” Pages 38-43, 121-125, and 240-41, are to be blacked out. “Tenet knows the drill,” said the president, “You look at those Iraq War documents we made public. He did the black magic marker thing on them.”

Tenet, along with Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer, were awarded the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” in December 2004. Though there was much controversy as to whether any of the recipients deserved such an honor, the President’s creative selection process made the question moot.

“It was Harry Truman who created the Presidential Medal of Freedom when he signed Executive Order 58011,” The President said. “Karl Rove, or somebody, is now drafting Executive Order 11058, which takes the Medal back. What I asked them to do was change the order numbers back to front. Get it?

“We used to call this sort of thing Indian-giving when I was a kid, but I believe the proper term is now Native-American-Giving.”