Bush vs Polar Bears, round 2

Oh, look, there's more:

Bush's Polar-Bear Problem

Polar bears can't get a break these days. First we saw them in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth desperately swimming about in the Artic in search of ice floes that seem to have disappeared due to global warming. Now we hear that experts working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can't talk about these giant white-furred beasts in overseas scientific meetings about climate change.

The order to squelch talk about polar bears came in a "new requirement" listing to government scientists traveling abroad. Henceforth, if they are participating in a meeting "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears," they need to report this and have a spokesperson assigned to articulate the administration's policies. Fish and Wildlife officials want to be sure that "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears," understands the administration's position on these topics.

Fish and Wildlife director H. Dale Hale said this was not an attempt to censor scientists, though the travel memos specifically require that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues." The memos were discovered and released by two environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Someone please explain to me how orders to "not be speaking on or responding to these issues" isn't censorship.