If you just let a little time pass, Republicans will rewrite history in the blink of an eye. And if people aren't paying attention, they may succeed. Case in point: A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan now claims that anyone (including journalists) who accuses former president George Bush of lying us into the Iraq war are acting like... Nazi propagandists.
A federal appeals judge wrote in a column published on Sunday that people who accuse former President George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War are peddling myths like those that led to the rise of Hitler.
Conservative activist judge Laurence H. Silberman, the federal appellate judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the idea the Bush administration "lied us into Iraq" has gone from "antiwar slogan to journalistic fact."
Silberman is upset with gasbag Ron Fournier, who to his credit, accurately stated that Bush lied us in the Iraq war.
Silberman uses the occasion of Fournier repeating the fact that Bush lied about Iraq as a fact to admonish him for bias. “In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq,” Silberman writes, “It is astonishing to see the 'Bush lied' allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.
We've covered the lies that the Bush administration used endlessly on our pages - along with a culpable media that assisted in convincing the American people we needed to attack Iraq because - freedom! All you have to do is to look no further than Colin Powell's speech to the U.N.
Buried in Silberman's WSJ op-ed is a lie that he can't cover up.
Silberman argues that a bipartisan commission, which he co-chaired, investigated the matter, and found that the Bush administration was victimized by faulty intelligence. “Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was ‘dead wrong’ about Saddam’s weapons,” concludes Silberman. So, yes, mistakes happen, but intelligence failures happen, and the Bush administration cannot be blamed for dishonesty.
Silberman does not mention that the commission he chaired did not even investigate whether the Bush administration manipulated intelligence. Senate Republicans refused to allow the commission to investigate this matter, fearing it would harm Bush’s reelection prospects. Indeed, Silberman himself wrote in the report at the time, “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.”
Even Bob Kerrey, of the 9/11 Commission refused to implicate George Bush in the attack because they didn't want it to seep into the 2004 election.
Try as he might, Silberman has failed miserably at trying to restore the honor of the Bush administration. Their lies have resulted in thousands upon thousands of deaths, destruction and a fractured middle east.
The question of whether, in addition to being victimized by faulty intelligence, also misrepresented the intelligence it did have, was left to a second Senate report, called the “Phase II” report, which came out a few years later. That report, which was endorsed by two of the committee’s seven Republicans and all its Democrats, concluded, “the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”
