Heaneyland!

Bushwatch-watch

So as you may have heard, Bush's wristwatch was either stolen, or lost, or taken off and put in his pocket, or dropped on the ground and retrieved by a bodyguard this weekend. Tony Snow claims Bush put it in his pocket. The Albanians claim he dropped it and one of his bodyguards retrieved it. Reuters says Bush put his hands behind his back so one of his bodyguards could take it off for him. And both Reuters and the Albanian authorities claim they have documentation for their version of events (video and photo, respectively).

You can watch the footage of when the watch disappeared here. There is a split second when his hands aren't visible, at which point he could be undoing his watch and sticking it in his pocket -- but he would have to be acting very expeditiously; I could barely get my own watch off in that amount of time, which lends credence to the Albanian version of events. Also note that Bush looks at the ground twice before the watch is observed to be missing. He looks down...and at his feet. Down...and at his feet. Is he looking at his own dropped watch? Or maybe it really was stolen and this is all a huge cover-up to prevent anti-Albanian violence? (Sadly, the hurtful stereotype of the "timepiece-thieving Albanian" has still not been eradicated after decades of work on the part of the Albanian Anti-Defamation League.)

Anyway, my question is, why do the accounts of the White House and the Albanians and Reuters differ at all? Someone must clearly be fudging something, and what's the point of concealing anything about so utterly trifling a matter? My theory is that the White House is so used to lying about everything and never giving the press a straight answer, that they can't stop doing it even when the matter at hand is trivial.