August 06, 2004
Lest We Forget
Michael Bérubé highlights an excellent article detailing exactly how the Bush administration knowingly exaggerated the threat of Iraq:
But as author Flannery O'Conner noted, "Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." That means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.
There's much more—it's a long article—but it's important that we regularly review the facts lest the spin and poor memory let Bush off the hook. We must demand better from our leaders. To do so requires us to remember how and why they have failed.
Without taking a position on the content of the article, I note that the source of this article appears to be an exceptionally partisan organization who are avowedly anti-Bush. I am always sceptical about material produced by somebody who has an axe to grind.
That's very true, but just a cursory look at the sources they cite (there are many) shows a wide mix of mainstream news, government websites, and others. Although it's certainly possibly all those citations are being distorted, it all fits well with what I'd already learned about the matter in the run-up and aftermath of the war on Iraq. This article just puts it all together. I'm sure their motivation for writing the article is partisan, but the article itself still seems a more or less straight-forward presentation of the facts. I'm not an expert on the matter so it's possible there are problems with it, but based on what I know it's correct.
That may be. I just found so much of the other material on that site to be generated to serve a political end (discrediting the Bush administration) that I wonder how reliable a source this can be. They may not even be distorting main stream sources, but their starting point makes me uncomfortable. It just seems like they really have a dog in this fight, these authors.