Hitchens On The “Bush Lied” Meme
Christopher the Great:
…[T]he really superb pedantry and literal-mindedness on which the remainder of the case [of the Bush lied crowd] depends…achieved something close to an apotheosis on the front page of the Washington Post on Nov. 12, where Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus brought complete gravity to bear. Is it true, as the president claimed in his Veterans Day speech, that Congress saw the same intelligence sources before the war, and is it true that independent commissions have concluded that there was no willful misrepresentation? Top form was reached on the inside page:
But in trying to set the record straight, [Bush] asserted: “When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.”
The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.
A prize, then, for investigative courage, to Milbank and Pincus. They have identified the same problem, though this time upside down, as that which arose from the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, during the Clinton-Gore administration, in 1998. That legislation—which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote—did expressly call for the removal of Saddam Hussein but did not actually mention the use of direct U.S. military force.
Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don’t be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the “shocked, shocked” faction, we already know who you are.
Just so…
Casablanca quotes again.
Matthews must be banging Hitch.
Actually, I do believe that Hitchens was targeting Matthews with the “Shocked, shocked” statement.
Yep, me, too…
My admiration for Hitchens just continues to grow. I may go on a steady diet of whiskey and cigarettes, hoping that if I’m sufficiently drunk and wheezy I’ll be able to write half as well as Hitch.
He certainly raises a good point regarding those who voted affirmatively in ’98 and ’02. What I found disturbing was the three responses (to date) below his article. First, we have the proclaimed “fence-sitter”, St33ve, who belies his claim as a fence-sitter for 4 paragraphs. Second, we have slaviksvensk who has the short-term memory of a goldfish when it comes to MSM reporting. And finally, we have Rainfingers who, in his last paragraph demonstrates the fantasies of so much of the left that the status quo was just fine by completely disregarding years of developments like refusals to comply with inspections, the ousting of the IAEA, attacks on the coalition in no-fly zones and oil-for-food scams, just to name a few.
Amazing.
No One Says it Like Hitchens
So which is it moonbats are you really as stupid as you claim to be or just disingenuous scoundrels who are so fillied with irrational hate for George Bush that you are willing to do anything including lying about something as serious as a war that ove…
[...] In USA. An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers Kyoto Be Damned! Syndicate The Site No One Says it Like Hitchens Filed by The Ugly American on November 15th, 2005 at 13:19 under Rants, Screeds, Polemics, etc You do not want to be on the other side of an argument with this guy. As the moonbats leading the “Bush Lied Us Into War” crowd now is. Decision08 had this up yesterday and I am remiss for not reading and posting it sooner. [...]