Posted on 11/19/2005 5:51:30 PM PST by neverdem
It is said that a big lie can work if it is repeated often enough. For weeks, leading Democrats have been hammering away at the Big Lie that George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Starting on Veterans Day, Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in the administration embarked on a "pushback," arguing that Bush--and many leading Democrats, including some now part of the Big Lie campaign--accurately characterized the intelligence at the time.
Bush, Cheney, and the administration have the truth on their side. Exhaustive and authoritative examinations of the prewar intelligence, by the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004, by the Silberman-Robb commission in 2005, and by the British commission headed by Lord Butler, have established that U.S. intelligence agencies, and the intelligence organizations of leading countries like Britain, France, and Germany, believed that Saddam Hussein's regime was in possession of or developing weapons of mass destruction--chemical and biological weapons, which the regime had used before, and nuclear weapons, which it was working on in the 1980s.
To the charges that Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence, the commission cochaired by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb found that the intelligence available to Bush but not to Congress was even more alarming than the intelligence Congress had. The Silberman-Robb panel also concluded, after a detailed investigation, that in no instance did Bush administration authorities pressure intelligence officials to alter their findings. Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. But Bush didn't lie about it. Some Bush supporters argue that the pushback now is a mistake, because it prevents the administration from focusing on events going forward. But the damage to Bush's credibility is real, and he needs to repair it to speak credibly about the future. At the same time, we must remember that the United States and our allies did not go to war solely because of weapons of mass destruction. There were other reasons, which Bush articulated at the time and which have been vindicated by events.
One of them was to remove from power one of the most brutal regimes on Earth. Mainstream media have enjoyed focusing on isolated prison abuses by U.S. forces and, in the past week, by Iraqis. (Have the media ever focused so closely on prison conditions in our past wars?) But these abuses are nothing compared with what the Saddam Hussein regime did every day. Rape rooms, prisoners fed into shredders, hundreds of mass graves: Do we really want to forget that the liberation of Iraq has vastly improved the lives of millions of people there?
Results. Another goal was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East--not just to help the people there but to change the mind-set of the region that produced the attacks of September 11. Before 2003, the dictators and authoritarian rulers of the region focused their peoples' inevitable discontent on the United States and Israel. Now the progress toward democracy in Iraq is leading Middle Easterners to concentrate on the question of how to build decent governments and decent societies. We can see the results--the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first seriously contested elections in Egypt, Libya's giving up WMD s, the Jordanian protests against Abu Musab Zarqawi's recent suicide attacks, and even a bit of reform in Saudi Arabia. In Syria, the Washington Post' s David Ignatius reports, "People talk politics here with a passion I haven't heard since the 1980s in Eastern Europe. They're writing manifestos, dreaming of new political parties, trying to rehabilitate old ones from the 1950s."
Almost surely, none of this would have happened without the liberation of Iraq. And there democracy goes forward: Seventy-eight percent voted for the Constitution last month, and democratic parties are contesting the elections to be held next month. Against this backdrop, mainstream media headlined the call for U.S. withdrawal by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who has long been skeptical of the war in Iraq. The propagators of the Big Lie against President Bush are trying to delegitimize not only him but also all the progress that has been made as a result of Iraq, progress both toward freedom for Middle Easterners and toward a Middle East that will no longer threaten the United States.
Bump
Powerful and from very respected Michael Barone, not a talking head.
-PJ
But now the Dems "cherrypick" information,(with the benefit of hindsight), and ignore opposing known facts.
Isn't this what they said Bush did?
No one can believe this will ever see the light of day on the MSM
GREAT article, thanks for posting it.
The shame is that Bush and Cheney had to speak up for themselves. Where are our Republican senators and Congresscritters?
Now they have to keep it up keep ramming their lies down their throats.
.
NEVER FORGET
Praise GOD that...
President BUSH has promised...
FREEDOM's return to:
Communist Vietnam
Communist North Korea
Communist Cuba
..as well as..
FREEDOM's arrival to:
All the countires of the Middle East
...during a BUSH Presidency...
...as America's own best self protection against future terrorist attacks here at home.
Last friday, at the Vietnam Wall on Veterans Day, I was blessed to personally thank Chariman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Corps Gen. PETER PACE for his protecting us in a new time of war.
The good General in turn thanked me back for "Leading the Way" as a Battle of IA DRANG Veteran 40 years ago, exactly.
We live in very extraordinary times now in this new Century, with extraordinary risks ..don't we..?
Those who do not pay attention to this fact do not serve our blessed country very well.
Office holder or not.
For what happened in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon 30 years ago, exactly...
...could happen here:
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
Signed:.."ALOHA RONNIE" Guyer
-HHC, 1/7th Cavalry 1965-66
-IA DRANG S-1 Personnel Clerk
-Lt. Col. HAL G. MOORE Radioman/Driver/Orderly/Chaplain Assistant in Vietnam
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set1.htm
(Photos)
NEVER FORGET
.
bttt amazing!
I don't buy hard copies of newspapers or magazines. I can't say for sure. My impression is that U.S.News & World Report prints hard copies of his OpEd column.
Yes!
-PJ
BTTT
Thanks for the links.
Thanks Nev. Great Article, it now has been added to my personal hard drive of Freeper Article Archives.
mark
You forget that laws, common sense, rational thought, and truth do not seem to apply to the left.
I imagine most have seen that Henry Kissinger's proteges have dominated foreign policy. So, everyone is shocked and amazed at the new vision of Bush/Rice. It makes them mad, too, because it is so different. The nerve, after all.
It must just be online, because I just looked in my latest issue of USN&WR (Nov. 21, 2005) and there is no article, only a link for their online version of "Barone Blog".
http://www.usnews.com/baroneblog
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