In recent weeks President Bush has been accused of lying about Iraq's ability to wage war in the months preceding the American-led invasion. No evidence of deployable weapons of mass destruction has turned up so far. In addition, numerous figures connected with the CIA have complained that the Bush administration pressured the intelligence agencies to provide data skewed to support its case against Iraq. Others allege that Bush and his advisors interpreted the evidence in an exceedingly "free" fashion.

　　How large this scandal becomes remains to be seen. Bush's popularity, heretofore extremely high, has been dipping, and some Democratic politicians on the national stage have entered the fray. They were afraid to do so earlier lest①they seem unpatriotic in wartime, thereby endangering their seats in Congress.

　　Conservative Wayne Stayskal rises to the president's defense in today's cartoon. A Democratic senator is in the hospital for plastic surgery. Like Pinocchio, he suffers from a nose that grows longer every time he tells a lie. His criticism of President Bush, in the opinion of his appropriately Republican surgeon (doctors, mostly members of the upper middle class, tend to be Republican in the US), is tantamount to lying --hence the enormous beak.

　　Of course, there's also a sly dig at the honesty of politicians in general -- or perhaps only of those in the Democratic Party, since Stayskal is such a fervent Republican: "Back again, Senator" (with the stress on "again") implies that the senator has required a nose job many times in the past. It would be hard for a habitual liar to endure Pinocchio's curse.