The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies - Frank Rich at New York Times

[applegrove]

September 17, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies
By FRANK RICH

'RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”

No kidding: “The Path to 9/11” was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that “we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.” Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a “truce” and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.

You’d think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD’s by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized “Path to 9/11,” supposedly based on the commission’s report, only advanced the nuts’ case.) If you’re a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what’s the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It’s better to game the system.

The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that’s why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he’s about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in “the context in which I made that statement last year.” The vice president invoked “context” to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its “last throes.”

.... SNIP"

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/opinion/17rich.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print

[grytpype]

1. Most people don't have Times Select, so here's the finale of this piece...

And I agree with this 100% -- anyone who is not calling for a massive influx of American troops into Iraq is accepting failure. And almost no one is is calling for a massive influx of American troops. That includes the Administration.

“Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning,” John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as “cut and run,” there’s only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that — “substantially more troops.” These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush’s convictions. Shouldn’t Republicans in Congress as well?

After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it’s tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party’s Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can’t emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today’s Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.

The trouble, of course, is that we don’t have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don’t want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don’t want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.

[n2doc]

4. Who's to say that more troops would do anything.

What if we put a million troops in Iraq? Without changing their behavior towards the Iraqi people I can't say that there would be peace. Sure, with enough troops one could maintian an illusion of peace. But I would predict that the casualty rate would go way, way up with so many "targets" for the insurgency.
Let's face it. We had our chance. In 2003, a million troops, with a plan to get the electricity and services on line, get the govenrment re-organized and with quick elections, might have worked. But we have F**ked up things so badly there that no number of troops is going to put it right.

[applegrove]

6. The point is they are purposely there with too few. Which means

they cannot win..just hold a line. Which makes for a slow war. Which is what Bushco want. A slow and torturous war. Like Lebanon or something.

[n2doc]

7. I know. But there seems to be this idea that it can be fixed

with more troops. I just don't buy that line. I agree this is exactly what busco wants. When Cheney said that they would do exactly the same again I think he was, for once, telling the truth. The point of the Iraq war was never to liberate Iraq. It was to set up a system where perpetual war can be used as a screen for looting the US treasury, getting rid of the constitution and civil liberties, and set up a ruling oligarchy that will rule absolutely until the economy of the US collapses.

[applegrove]

8. Oh I think the slow war does more than that. I think it is about bashing

the heads of the Middle East in for a long, long time. Till the young generation is so tired of war & death..that they do what the Europeans did after two World Wars.. and turn to peace.

Problem is the vast majority of ME are for peace anyway. A small % are just being stirred up by oil money and wahabism and because some are so poor..because the distribution of wealth is so exceptionally unfair in many parts of the ME...that they make for easy pickings.

I think Lebanon is a good example of a place that is so war tired. But then again... who would put places through a 30 year war just to get peace? Better to work through War Crimes trials and the like and get peace sooner.

[texpatriot2004]

2. Lies, lies, lies nm

[Joe Bacon]

3. Gee, Frank, you told some pretty large lies about Al Gore, didn't you?

Bob Somerby has documented your lies in The Daily Howler.

Until you apologize in print to Al Gore, anything you write is totally worthless to me.

[exlrrp]

5. Read the whole article at:

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/
Another great Frank Rich contribution