The Origin of Robert Parry’s Consortium News

[Octafish]

33. Republicans Still Denying Bush Lied About Iraq

By Jonathan Chait
NYMag, Feb. 9, 2015

As America hurtles toward a potential Bush-versus-Clinton dynastic rematch, no Democratic loyalists have yet come forward to insist that Bill Clinton was in fact speaking the truth when he denied having sexual relations with that woman. There is, however, a continual submerged effort to deny that George W. Bush’s administration misled the country into the Iraq War. Today, The Wall Street Journal op-ed page has Republican judge Laurence Silberman fiercely insisting that the Bush administration did not lie, and that the claim it lied is itself a calumny.

Silberman’s argument is a simplistic one aimed at confusing those who have already forgotten the basic sequence of events. 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.”

SNIP...

Incredibly, Silberman’s op-ed does not mention the Phase II report at all. Silberman simply asserts that his committee, which was specifically instructed not to investigate whether Bush manipulated intelligence, did not find that Bush manipulated intelligence, and presents this as the final word.

It is hard to believe that Silberman expects such a crude exercise in propaganda to actually succeed. His intention appears to be slightly more indirect: to turn the demonstrable fact that the Bush administration deliberately misled the public into, at the very least, a partisan dispute that journalists cannot repeat without fear of being accused of bias. Silberman shrewdly selects as his target Ron Fournier, the apotheosis of the journalistic ethos that the truth lies halfway between the competing claims of the two parties at any given moment.

SOURCE: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/republicans-still-denying-bush-lied-about-iraq.html

The guy's not all bad. Nixon's DOJ gave him the job of reading through J Edgar Hoover's "Secret and Confidential" files. Silberman described it as "the single worst experience of my long governmental service...this country--and the Federal Bureau of Investigation--would be well served if (Hoover's) name were removed from the bureau's building. It is as if the Defense Department were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite to support legislation to accomplish this repudiation of a very sad chapter in American history."

SOURCE: US News & World Report Aug 18, 2006 via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Silberman