This "Victory" Tour About as Good as the One With the Jackson Five

A slight rearrangement of the paragraphs of a New York Times (no link due to free "subscription" requirement) article yields some interesting insight (emphasis points are mine):

Mr. Ashcroft and senior aides say critics are missing the point.

"He's not going on the road to debate the Patriot Act," said David Israelite, deputy chief of staff to Mr. Ashcroft, "as much as to inform the American public about what it is and what it isn't, because there are a lot of misconceptions out there.

When Mr. Ashcroft appeared in North Carolina on Saturday, Barbara Nettesheim, 69, of Chapel Hill wanted to let him know that she thought the government's antiterrorism campaign was chilling free speech. There were more than 75 empty seats at Mr. Ashcroft's speech, so many that hotel workers cleared away a few rows beforehand.

But because the speech was not open to the public, Ms. Nettesheim had to settle for waving a placard in a raucous protest that spanned two blocks outside the event.

It was the first political protest she had ever attended, Ms. Nettesheim said. "But what the government is doing really scares me, and I think Ashcroft should have the guts to talk to regular people and listen to them," she said.

So, to summarise:

Ashcroft says his tour is to "inform the American public" about what the Patriot Act (and "Victory" Act) are about.

But the speeches are closed to the public, attended mainly (according to the article) by uniformed military and police officers, who (of course) strongly back further invasion of privacy and easing of policing requirements. And reports are widespread that the speech itself is full of, um, serious inaccuracies and gross distortions of the truth.

The Bush administration in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.

Couldn't Ashcroft have saved the government some serious money by simply reciting his stump speech in front of a mirror?