Who Is Lying About Iraq?

CommentaryMagazine ^ | 11-07-2005 | Norman Podhoretz

[KJC1]

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

[KJC1]

This is a great read. Long, but well worth it.

[RedCell]

ping for later

[edcoil]

"What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed"

Bush won't fight back. Arnold won't in California.

A lie goes around the world before the truth gets its shoes on but, the truth has to get up and going.

Neither Bush or Arnold seem to be fighting back.

[Williams]

I think the biggest lie now is that the "war" is going badly. The war was won, Iraq is meeting every election milestone, and there is no significant military action against our forces.

I blame the administration at this point, they don't have the political courage to say things are going well. They think that if there are casualties the next day they will look bad. They need to EXPLAIN things to the public. I'd like to know who the heck they think is going to do it, if they don't.

[BackInBlack]

Excellent article. The one line I take issue with, various forms of which have been floating around this forum for a while now is this: "To lie means to say something one knows to be false." To lie is also to say something one has little reason to believe is true. If I say my neighbor's dog were hit by a car and killed today, I'm lying even though I don't know for sure that I'm wrong. It is also a lie, for all moral purposes, to utter a technical truth that is designed to mislead someone into believing something false. It's a distinction without a difference. What I'm driving at is we don't want to diminish the standard of lying. In the long run, that doesn't serve anyone. Now under these strong standards, I think the administration did tell some fibs in the run up to war. That's what administrations do. I know of no administration, Republican or Democrat, that did not tell similar lies. And none of the administration's fibs change the fact that this war was a just cause that we should have undertaken even without the exaggerations. That, to me, is the bottom line.

[Williams]

I'm really scared now, not for Bush but for my country. Scared that empty left wing arguments may actually prevail, leading to disaster for our Mideast allies and our own security. And furious that the administration does not seem to be aggressively moving forward, i.e., confronting Iran and Syria with a plan for results.

If the only lesson Bush learned from Iraq is that democrats will complain, we are lost.

[ocr1]

ping

[kellynla]

BTTT

[Moolah]

I agree and we are going to lose a lot of ground come '06 if this continues.
We kiss ass with Bill Clinton and let the Dems lie every day without even a response. I sure don't understand.

[Capriole]

Tremendous article. I wish the Bush adminstration were more forthright in putting out information like this. If Karl Rove weren't so busy with legal problems he could put together a media campaign that would consolidate this evidence and shut the Democrats up.

[Quilla]

Holy cow! Did you catch footnote #1:

Hard as it is to believe, let alone to reconcile with his general position, Joseph C. Wilson, IV, in a speech he delivered three months after the invasion at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, offhandedly made the following remark: “I remain of the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam’s regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons.”

[CommandoFrank]

Neither Bush or Arnold seem to be fighting back.

What do you expect... they're Republicans!

[Homer1]

Everybody knows it's a lie, but it's also a big cash cow for the democrats; so they keep repeating it.

[traderrob6]

Please name one (fib)

[rhombus]

A great resource, will save for later but why is this dated December 2005? Am I having a senior moment? What year is it?

[KJC1]

Ping for a great article to read and bookmark for future use ;)

[ZULU]

It is a good read.

WMD were just ONE of the MANY good reasons for invading Iraq.

Saddam was also funding terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Saddam may very well have been involved with the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Saddam tried to murder an American President (Bush I).

Saddam violated the terms of the Persian Gulf War I treaty.

Saddam ordered his people to fire on U.S. and British planes enforcing the no-fly rule.

Iraw was strategically positioned in the nexus of terror between the Sudan, Lybia and Syria on the west and Iran on the east.

Bush's problem has been his indefensible inability to articulate for the unwashed American masses all these facts along with the ones outlined in the article.

Whenever Dems attack, Republican S.O.P. is to sit there like a punching bag and take it.

The problem with Iraq and the war there is it has become an end in itself instead of what it really is - just ONE battle in a major worldwide war with Islamofascism.

Shortly AFTER our invasion, Lybia came clean (or pretended to), the Syrians were quiet and the Iranian nutjobs stopped all the heated rhetoric about the great white Satan.

They were scared. They were afraid THEY were next. They should have been.

When cleaning out a nest of vipers, make sure you don't miss any.

[cwb]

Yeah...Wilson also appeared on PBS just shortly after Bush's SOTU Address...and not only did he not mention one thing about the "16 Words," he went on to agree that Saddam was indeed a threat that needed to be dealt with. At this time, he was in almost complete agreement with the President's speech.

[Quilla]

That threw me too. November 7, 2005 is written at the end of the article. I believe the Norman Podhoretz Reader is a monthly publicaton.

[TChris]

Neither Bush or Arnold seem to be fighting back.

Silence lends credence to even the most blatant of lies.