Frank Rich: Lying Like It’s 2003

[cal04]

THOSE who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but who could imagine we’d already be in danger of replaying that rotten year 2003?

Scooter Libby, the mastermind behind the White House’s bogus scenarios for ginning up the war in Iraq, is back at Washington’s center stage, proudly defending the indefensible in a perjury trial. Ahmad Chalabi, the peddler of flawed prewar intelligence hyped by Mr. Libby, is back in clover in Baghdad, where he purports to lead the government’s Shiite-Baathist reconciliation efforts in between visits to his pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

Last but never least is Mr. Libby’s former boss and Mr. Chalabi’s former patron, Dick Cheney, who is back on Sunday-morning television floating fictions about Iraq and accusing administration critics of aiding Al Qaeda. When the vice president went on a tear like this in 2003, hawking Iraq’s nonexistent W.M.D. and nonexistent connections to Mohamed Atta, he set the stage for a war that now kills Iraqi civilians in rising numbers (34,000-plus last year) that are heading into the genocidal realms of Saddam. Mr. Cheney’s latest sales pitch is for a new plan for “victory” promising an even bigger bloodbath.

Mr. Cheney was honest, at least, when he said that the White House’s Iraq policy would remain “full speed ahead!” no matter what happened on Nov. 7. Now it is our patriotic duty — politicians, the press and the public alike — to apply the brakes. Our failure to check the administration when it rushed into Iraq in 2003 will look even more shameful to history if we roll over again for a reboot in 2007. For all the belated Washington scrutiny of the war since the election, and for all the heralded (if so far symbolic) Congressional efforts to challenge it, too much lip service is still being paid to the deceptive P.R. strategies used by the administration to sell its reckless policies. This time we must do what too few did the first time: call the White House on its lies. Lies should not be confused with euphemisms like “incompetence” and “denial.”

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http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. Iraqi civilian death toll since start of war is 600,000

[formercia]

7. How many relatives of the 600,000 have sworn a blood oath?

Their revenge will take generations. Sometimes I think it was all done on purpose to foster perpetual War and keep the Military-Industrial Complex in business.

[illinoisprogressive]

2. I think alot of people will not support or believe this administration again

They think we will but, no. And congress is warning them to behave.
Things have changed. they just haven't realized it yet.

[riderinthestorm]

3. Not in my district. IL #6 elected Pete Roskam - a Bu$h clone instead of Duckworth

:cry:

I think people are suckers - they don't want to examine the truth, ever. It's easier to go with the media spin.

[Robbien]

4. Yes, they are still lying. Even now.

The next push on the “way forward” propaganda campaign arrives Tuesday night, with the State of the Union address.

It just keeps going and going and going.

Good essay.

[brer cat]

5. Worth reading it all.

another piece:

"An American military official in Baghdad read the writing on the wall to The Times last week: “We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem. We are being played like a pawn.” That’s why the most destructive lie of all may be the White House’s constant refrain that its doomed strategy is the only one anyone has proposed. Administration critics, Mr. Cheney said last Sunday, “have absolutely nothing to offer in its place,” as if the Iraq Study Group, John Murtha and Joseph Biden-Leslie Gelb plans, among others, didn’t predate the White House’s own."

[Cocoa]

6. FactCheck.org declares Bush "got the facts right"

I'm glad Rich calls Bush's account of the origins of the civil war the lie that it is. This lie is being spread all over and it's not getting called out.

Check out FactCheck.org, which does its usual magic on the Bush lies. Equating Bush's speech with Durbin's response is their classic strategy of minimizing Bush's "big lies."

http://www.factcheck.org/article472.html

Summary

President Bush's sobering address to the nation laid out his plan to rescue Iraq by sending in more troops at a time when polls show the American people want just the opposite. Is his approach a significant change of course? Will it work? We leave that to others to chew over. What we can say is that he was right on the facts he cited, although there were some notable omissions. While he highlighted the planned distribution of oil revenues to the Iraqi people and a new commitment of reconstruction funds by the Iraqi government, he didn't say a word about how the U.S. or Iraq would deal with rampant corruption that threatens to undermine both.

Similarly, we found the rebuttal by Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, to be factually accurate but also somewhat selective.