The (Very) Big Lie

U.S.News & World Report ^ | 11/28/05 | Michael Barone

[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.

[Clintonfatigued]

During the Clinton administration, Democrats were making the very smae claims they are now labeling lies.

[bitt]

bumpo

[bitt]

good link!

[Seaplaner]

Michael Barone, you concluded with,

"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.

Nicely stated, sir.

Take the day off tomorrow, you've earned it.

.

[Zacs Mom]

"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."

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.

But it cannot survive treason from within.



An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known, and he carries his banners openly.

But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely,
his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys,
heard in the very hall of government itself.

For the traitor appears no traitor.

He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims,
and he wears their face and their garments,
and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in hearts of men.



He rots the soul of a nation.

He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city.

He infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

A Murderer Is Less To Be Feared."

Cicero, 42 B.C.

[Zacs Mom]

"The shame is that Bush and Cheney had to speak up for themselves. Where are our Republican senators and Congresscritters? "

Where indeed??!! This has been my biggest complaint!!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[ForGod'sSake]

BUMP!

[Mia T]

 

bravo

Your latest ("A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within....) is especially powerful.

One suggestion, if I might:

If you think back, there was one particular Democrat traitor who gave all of these other Democrat traitors the imprimatur to quit tiptoeing around the water's edge and start stomping big-time on George Bush and America.

It was this watershed in Democrat treason more than anything else that set into motion America's downward spiral in Iraq.

Who was this ignominious pig?

HOWARD DEAN!

Perhaps you can find a suitable place for him in your powerful statement....

By the way, the utter-failure clintons couldn't abide President Bush's post-9/11 march to greatness. Do not doubt for one minute which two Democrat traitors are the driving force behind all this undermining....

Their standard legacy inflation ploy, (although in real time this time), is in full gear.

 

Yesterday, Daniel Patrick Moynihan died. Today, the clintons are arrogating his soul. Hardly surprising. In 1999, the clintons were not at all shy about seizing his still-warm senate seat.

One has merely to recall the Jefferson double-helix hoax to understand that posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation….

Standard-Issue clintonism

If misappropriation of Jefferson's alleles hinged on a broken line of descent, misappropriation of Moynihan's endorsement depends on a broken line of dissent. Like Sally Hemmings' progeny, Moynihan's later acquiescence is of dubious lineage

Mia T, Moynihan Myths

Posthumous misappropriation is, for the obvious reason, the clintons' preferred method of legacy inflation. While downward revision ("defining deviancy down") is the classic clinton m.o., (see Jefferson double-helix hoax), clinton, exposed, is now arguing the obverse; the double negative offers the illusion of a higher ground.

Mia T, 6.18.05
HILLARY FLUNKED D.C. BAR EXAM
"the smartest woman in the world" sought less competitive venue

IT TAKES A CLINTON TO RAZE A COUNTRY

by Mia T, 11.14.05

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)

[Mia T]

excellent bump!

 

GIVEN:

• hillary clinton is a "CONGENITAL LIAR",
  
  
• the seditious Left caused America to telegraph our every intention to the UN for almost a year, engineering the ludicrous slow-mo, blow-by-blow buildup to war.
  
  
• we now learn from none other than the seditious, (and obviously not too swift) classified-data disseminator and memogate schemer himself--Sen. Jay Rockefeller--that he gave our enemies in the Mideast a heads-up that we were going into Iraq...

And the Left doesn't think Saddam had more than sufficient time to ship his WMD and WMD components to Syria... or to some other credentialed member of the asymmetric netherworld? Gimme a break....

The only conclusion we can make about WMD in Iraq is about what we did find and what we didn't find. The Left, which includes the press, either needs to take a course in logic or needs to face the firing squad.

THE DEMOCRATS ARE GONNA GET US KILLED. It's as simple as that.

 

How can this country survive when the Democrats and their media accomplices are seditious, unrelenting purveyors of THE BIG LIE?

NOTE: Demonizing a putative liar-president is not the best way to set up the candidacy of the sickest liar of the pack.... Maybe the smart money is trying for an endrun around the incompetent witch....

NEW MOVIE! for the birds
(THE INCOMPETENCE OF HILLARY CLINTON)

by Mia T, 11.13.05

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
ARTICLE

hillary's vaccine shortage, the avian flu, pandemic, terrorism, hillary clinton, bill clinton, bird flu

IT TAKES A CLINTON TO RAZE A COUNTRY

by Mia T, 11.14.05

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)

[Zacs Mom]

Good question!

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs (CIA Report, October 2002)

[Alamo-Girl]

Volley bump!

[Republican Wildcat]

bump

[ForGod'sSake]

You don't seem to get enough kudos for your work Mia T, so here's a kudo for you. Good stuff.

[Coop]

Great article, great post!

[Scarchin]

Big BTTT

[Republican Wildcat]

bttt

[Sonora]

Very insightful reply.

[UCANSEE2]

ATTENTION - All Democratic Party leaders and their followers who believe President Bush lied to the public.

A DEMONSTRATION will be done to show the validity of this concept. Please meet in the Arizona Desert, where the non WMD weapons will be detonated. This includes non-existing biological and chemical weapons, as well as non-existing nuclear weapons.

Since they do not exist, no harm will befall any attendees.
Please bring your own lunch.

[El Gato]

Where are our Republican senators and Congresscritters?

Cowering in the cloakrooms, pi$$ing their pants and/or panties, over the latest "push" poll numbers.