The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has now released its report on the propaganda and misinformation on the Jessica Lynch rescue and the Pat Tillman death, and it basically comes down to Omertà, the Mafia code of silence:

“A near universal lack of recall” by Bush administration officials has thwarted a congressional investigation into whether the administration deliberately misrepresented the details of the friendly fire death of former NFL player Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture of Jessica Lynch in the first days of the Iraq invasion.

In a report released Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed skepticism about the widespread lack of memory of the two events, which were the subject of widespread media coverage and can be counted among the best known incidents of the wars.

About Tillman’s death, “The committee interviewed several senior White House officials, including Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Press Secretary Scott McClellan and chief speech writer Michael Gerson,” the committee said. “Not a single person could recall when he heard about the fratricide or what he did in response.”

I hope that at some point someone there cuts a deal with prosecutors, because a bunch of these folks should be spending the next decade or so in prison.