Bush Never Lied to Us About Iraq ( In the L.A. Times no less! )

Los Angeles Times ^ | June 16, 2008 | James Kirchick

[kellynla]

Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed that he had been hoodwinked.

"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.

Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.

The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress."

Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.

Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.

[MileHi]

BUMP

[kellynla]

As a CA native and a previous subscriber for almost 30 years to the L.A. Times, I have to disagree with you.

After the LAT published the “doctored” picture of a U.S. soldier in Iraq standing over someone with his weapon pointed at the person as opposed to the weapon being pointed away from the person as it actually was and numerous anti-military and antiwar articles over the years; I canceled my subscription.

One token piece SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE FACT doesn't change my mind about the Times...in fact, because it took the Times SEVEN YEARS to print such an article only reinforces my opinion of the LAT!

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[ETL]

After Bill O’Reilly pressed the LA Times several years ago, they apparently hired one or two right-wing journalists.

[kellynla]

“After Bill O’Reilly pressed the LA Times several years ago, they apparently hired one or two right-wing journalists.”

Well this is not one of them! LOL

I didn’t know that they had hired any...
in fact they fired Michael Ramirez who is a conservative cartoonist and the only reason I even bothered for years to look at the op/ed page of the LAT.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

...the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative on the left of how we went to war.

Fixed it.

[God luvs America]

not my point...the new republic is far more leftist than the times; hence your point is magnified....

[kellynla]

gotcha...

[School of Rational Thought]

You add “In the L.A. Times no less!” implies attribution to the LA Times. If not, the comment has no relevance, since the paper does print opposing views.

And no, you didn’t say it, you wrote it. Let me know when you complete your English composition course.

[kellynla]

run along and quit bothering me with your blather...

gezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...you need to change your screen name. LMAO

[A_perfect_lady]

I don’t think we should even concede that the intel was faulty. No, it wasn’t. He had WMD, he used WMD, then he hid the WMD. Since the stash the UN was looking for was small enough to be hidden in MY APARTMENT... it’s no wonder we haven’t had that wondrous moment where you open Al Capone’s vault and there’s actually something in there. It’s rather like saying that since we’ve never found Osama bin Laden, maybe he doesn’t really exist either.

[Para-Ord.45]

bookmarked

[kellynla]

“Since the stash the UN was looking for was small enough to be hidden in MY APARTMENT”

BINGO!

We have a winner!

There was even some talk that the WMD was trucked to Iran or Syria.
And of course it could have been dumped into a river someplace..

[The_Reader_David]

It isn’t an ‘token’ piece. The LA Times debunked Clinton’s ‘genocide’ accusations during bombing of Serbia, and if you search the Free Republic archives, you’ll find at least half a dozen times over the past two years that FReepers have given the ‘hell freezes over’ reaction to the LA Times being right about something. Much more frequent than for any other MSM outlet.