Who is rewriting history?
by Jack GrantThe usual suspects are both cheerleading and decrying the Veteran’s Day speech President George W. Bush made that assailed those (including specifically “some Democrats”) who are ostensibly “rewriting history” with respect to the lead-up to the current war in Iraq.
The remarks of the President, who is already severely challenged on the credibility front, would carry a lot more weight if he had all of his facts straight and correct.
Given that the administration has “rewritten history” in the reasons for the war in Iraq, changing from speeches immediately before the war that mentioned democracy and freedom only once or twice while warning of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) tens of times in a speech to now claiming that the sole motivation regardless of any other concerns was to spread democracy, is it not more than a bit disingenuous to accuse others of rewriting history? (if you want exact statistics, I’ll go through the speeches at www.whitehouse.gov, but I think any reasonable person will share my recollection without dispute)
I started blogging in February of 2003, back when the “case for war” was being made, and the warbloggers of the time were breathlessly posting links to publicly available satellite photos of facilities in Iraq that if their house of cards conclusions had been real we would have been regaled with huge page-one headlines of how Iraq was on the verge of creating an armageddon of chemical, biological, AND nuclear weapons that were all combined in an evil melange intended to create the greatest amount of death and destruction.
Somehow, even though those cardhouses of extrapolation have proven to be completely wrong, the warbloggers continue with their apologistic explanations, when not attacking as unpatriotic those who question our collective decisions as a nation.
Does this mean I fully accept the narrative presented by the “Bush lied” crowd?
Nope.
I do not, unless they mean to say that Bush lied to himself.
I believe the administration saw what it wanted to see, and refused to listen to alternative viewpoints.
I have seen this so often in my 15 year career in the high-tech industry that it is an old, boring story for me now.
Hard data ignored, expert analysis discounted, the story is an old one not limited to governments nor to high-tech. Only the scope of the tragedies created highlight the differences in the indifference.
So, who is rewriting history?
Everyone.
I ask you, in the strongest terms, please, make your own judgments, don’t just memorize and repeat the talking points as a mantra. The world is far more complicated than short phrases can convey.
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History, first draft, second draft, and rewriting
The assertion that some parties are “rewriting history” merits closer examination. Please make that examination rather than regurgitating the “talking points” which is the…
By The Moderate Voice on 11.14.05 02:26
I find the “Bush lied” claim to be too similar to the reightwing smear machine which is hopefully in decline.
First Bush is a hands off president so he probably did not look closely at data and sources.
Second of all the comments of Colenel Wilkerson and quite a few others through the years does not prove lies, it does indicate a selection of individuals and data that reinforced certain views.
We have seen the desire to suppress unwelcome opinions in the acts against Wilson, Sheniski, Lawrence Lindsay and quite a few others. Tragically as Fallows describes in Blind Into Baghdad this meant ignoring the opinion of the army war college, the state department and other usual authorities on the situation in post war Iraq. We saw the replacement of “professionals” with politically correct cadre and now in the CIA among other places.
Yet this is not specifically lying. Bureaucracies get balanced according to perceptions. I truly fear the choices may have been disasters, there is growing fear Chalabi was always an Iranian agent.
But if in fact this corruption of our system is the real danger, then the partisan desire to “get” Bush to focus on this detail and that is as destructive as the rightwing dittohead insistence that any criticism of how the war was waged or proposal to improve the effort was treason.
The left historically has only been marginally concerned with the national security issues that are at stake. There is a real danger the Bush administration has crippled outr national security, but whether he did so cynically or immorally or with sincere good intentions is a footnote; the issue is the state these possible purges may have left our system in.
And it is not an easy situation to evaluate because even many of the fiercest critics of Bush also claim serious flaws in the old infrastructure. Plus the Church committee method of dragging these things out in public did not prove the best road to success.
Reid’s call for investigation administration distortion of the agencies in gathering pre war evidence is a necessary step as are increasing warnings from the establishment such as General Scowcroft on dangerous assumptions and policies. But these are not primarily a matter of perfidy on the part of the president nor are they a blanket indictment of his choices that somehow prove his fiercest critics were always correct.
That never been wrong and the other side being evil is exactly the attitude that makes so many of us sick of the Rovians and dittoheads.
By jane on 11.14.05 19:24
Anyone who knows anything at all about alcoholics anonymous and step programs recognizes the source of Bush lying to himself. The entire purpose of a step program for substance abusers is to retrain your brain to stop lying to yourself about your motives. Bush never went through one, and so here we are. The man doesn’t need a spin meister. What he needs is a sponsor.
By rael on 11.14.05 22:17
Yes. But.
You know I love you, Jack, and we are closer on this than you think. My problem here is that neither side is willing to face the fact that everyone had problems here. For instance, on Fox News Sunday (and for my taste, Wallace frere isn’t as bad as some claim) Senator Rockefeller stated that he made pre-war trips to Syria, Jordan amd Saudi Arabia allerting those countries that war with Iraq was a fait accompli.
Investigations anyone? My point is that it isn’t just the “Rovians and dittoheads” that are making us sick. There are demagogues to go around on this. If we want to have in hearings and whathot afterwards, I’m all for that. This is what modern politics gets us. We have a paralytic president and an opposition party that doesn’t understand the word “loyal.”
In the midst of this, we have Democrats (my party, by the way)claiming that they were duped by a president that they consider deficient.
Some rallying cry: The Democrats: Dumber than Bush!
By Daniel on 11.15.05 00:44
Great piece … I have some quibbles with it (I believe that the Bush Admin did expect to find WMDs, but they still didn’t divulge contradictory information to the Senate Intelligence Committee because they didn’t trust the Senate to come to the same conclusion they had) … but as far as everyone trying to rewrite history you’re on the money.
Although you gotta admit that there is a big contrast between these two arguments:
a) I didn’t have good intelligence, and I made a serious mistake because of it
b) I didn’t have good intelligence, but I don’t regret anything I did based on bad intelligence
Which one do you want making the next decision for you?
By Balconesfault on 11.17.05 21:48