"Revising" History

A classic political technique is to accuse your enemy of doing exactly what you yourself are doing, then watch as they twist themselves into a pretzel trying to turn the argument back onto you. The Bush administration has learned this lesson well and this, combined with their mastery of Orwellian double-speak, has proven to be a fairly potent political tool until recently. Bush was at it again in his speech, taking advantage of Veteran's Day to cloak himself in the shield of our soldiers while accusing his critics of trying to "rewrite history." However, according to this useful analysis in the Washington Post today, it might just be Bush and his cronies who are doing a little nudging of history themselves.

"President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate."

Well, that's blunt. Do they have an example of this? But of course:

"National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered 'the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence.' He said that 'those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen.'

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: 'Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry.'"

Oh, but that's one example, right? Well, maybe there's a few more:

"In the same speech, Bush asserted that '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.' Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that 'we all looked at the same intelligence.'

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country."

Courts, preferring polite language, usually refer to that sort of thing as a "mischaracterization." Down here among the commoners, we refer to that as a lie. There's more of course. Read the rest of the article for more examples of historical revision.

Bush's problem at this point is that it's too little, too late. Polls already reflect that a majority of Americans are questioning not only the credibility of his administration, but Bush's actual honesty. Carefully parsing your words and spining the facts just enough to make technical points about who said this or that, isn't going to change that perception. The only possible thing that can make all of this go away is fixing Iraq, which this administration has proven themselves incapable of doing. Bush entered his second term aiming for the history books, but it's going to take more then a little revisionism down the road to change how history will judge him.