The Workday Liberal

On Friday November 12, during a speech supposedly to mark Veterans day, president George Bush said the following:

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,"

The president then, in a striking example of the pot calling the snowflake black, falsely charged the Democratic party with the following statement.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

He then proceeded to be deeply irresponsible and rewrite the history of congressional approval for the Iraqi invasion by claiming:

"More than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power,"

Let me address the first quote: Exactly what was it about the nation of Iraq that made it in any way a consideration in the war on terror. It was the administrations, in hindsight, false linkage of Sadaam with Al-queda. A supposed relationship that was repeatedly harped upon prior to the war, was cited in the resolution the white house sent to the congress that authorized the war, and was certified by the president in his notification to congress upon invading Iraq that he had done so with the due authorization of congress. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with president Bush's assertion that false charges have indeed proven devastating to our cause in the war on terror. The false charges levied by the president to justify the Iraqi invasion have cost us immensely in this war.

Let me now address the presidents third charge, because it closely relates to the 1st quote I just discussed. The assertion that the congress voted with the same access to the intelligence that he had is in itself a falsehood, and a revision of history. What he asserts here quite simply is demonstratably not true. Materials and presentations to congress invariably included only the most incriminating evidence against Saddam, whilst not mentioning any sort of intelligence that refuted the claim. Thus it is that the then former secretary of state, Collin Powell now says that his presentation to the U.N., using the same material then being presented to congress, was the worst day of his life. If someone needs further proof of this besides what is readily available by searching google, they simply are not interested in the truth of the matter, but are confirmed kool-aid drinkers.

Onto the second charge of the president. That of revising history. It is frankly quite difficult to tolerate the presidents fingerwagging in this regard. Let us consider several examples where-in this white house quite clearly simply revised history it did not care for. The most recent example is the white house transcript debacle, where-in a reply given by Scott McClellan as "that's accurate" and caught on tape for the whole world to see and hear is officially given to the world in the white house transcript as "I dont think that's accurate". And then the white house gets all huffy with other transcript services who are not so ready to just rewrite history as the white house wishes it had happened. Is there any more bald faced revision of history than to actually take the response of an administration official and to officially claim he did not say what he is on tape as having said?

Since the president saw fit to bring up the campaign of 2004, let us focus on revisionism that affected that campaign shall we? There were two glaring examples that involved revisionist history posited by this administration in an attempt to belittle the Kerry/Edwards ticket. Vice president Cheney, in an attempt to show that John Edwards was a senatorial light weight, revised history by claiming that he had never met, senator Edwards. The link above provides the pictorial evidence to prove the lie, but Cheney did not mind tossing out that revisionist talking point.

The next revisionism came from the third presidential debate between senator Kerry and president Bush. The exchange in question, was this gem:

KERRY: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."
BUSH: Gosh, I just don' think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Guess what kiddies. It was no exaggeration at all. President Bush actually said, of Osama Bin Ladin in March of 2002 "You know, I just don't spend that much time on him"... "I truly am not that concerned about him." Does this mean that John Kerry is better versed in the words of George Bush than Bush himself is? One can only shake ones head in wonderment at this.

So we see a pattern of revisionism if it fits the administrations political goals, yet now they call fact finding, and truth telling by Democrats revisionist history? Perhaps if the record of this administration were a bit cleaner in this regard they would be more believable. What we are actually witnessing here is an attempt by the administration to revise the history of the leadup to the war. They in effect are soiling the nest, and blaming the nest cleaner for doing the dirty deed. We see through it, and the truth will come out if we stick to our guns.