Krugman: Get Me Rewrite!

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/opinion/06KRUG.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1076046882-j4pcgi59juVn/ivxEtyj4g

Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments.

Let's start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade.

A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."

Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.

And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.

[Sliverofhope]

1. Oh, yippie

It's so nice to see the Office of Special Plans mentioned in newsprint. I don't know if I've seen that before, but it's welcome.

[ewagner]

2. This is almost too good to be true

Looks like the neocons tried to have it both ways....Glorifying their leader for standing up to the inept CIA and then blaming the CIA for the idiotic ramblings of the OSP.........

I just love this part:

...Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."

on edit: this deserves a :kick:

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Orwellian moment

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ingnorace is Strength

Rigged Elections are Democratic
Colonial Occupation is Liberation

[ochazuke]

4. Shall we call it Bush-speak?

There's got to be a term to refer to this tendency that these GREAT LIARS like shrub and Sen. Roberts have of completely re-writing history when they make outrageous statements like the ones Krugman quotes in his op-ed article.

How about W-talk? dubya-talk?

[DebJ]

5. Lies works for me. Short and to the point.

[ochazuke]

7. No, I'm serious. We need a vocabulary to get our point across.

You can't just call them LIARS every time they LIE because we'll be blue in the face crying out LYING LIARS are telling more LIES again. LIARS!

And people will tune us out.

We need something catchy that labels their every disgusting tactic. You gotta think like an advertising agent. We're selling the concept that the rethuglicans try to re-write history when justifying their outrageous behavior.

I like dubyatalk. sounds like double-talk, and it's go the dubya. Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it.

[Old and In the Way]

8. How about Republican Relativistic Reality?

They are big proponents of the 3 R's.....

[JasonDeter]

6. Sen. Roberts is a piece of work isn't he? On C-Span

he held a news conference with another Senator and it was laughable the crap comming out of his mouth. The other Senator had to contain himself at the end and in fact did end the news conference, stayed around and told the reporters he'd do anything to get the truth out. The reporters look confused, the truth eluded them.

[ochazuke]

9. He ran unopposed in the last election

There must be a few people in Kansas who would vote against him. If I lived in Kansas, I'd vote for a rotting sunflower over that balding crap merchant.

[scottxyz]

10. dubya-talk

That has a great ring to it - sounds like double-talk.

I think that could become a great catchphrase.

Pass it on.

[Robbien]

11. Bush and Co. run quite a fudge factory

That was how the Boulder DailyCamera titled this Krugman piece. Rather sums it all up doesn't it.