Ron Suskind, a longtime critic and watchdog of the Bush administration has published a book in which he makes the case that the Bush administration went so far as to forge a document supposedly proving that a member of al-Qaeda was trained by Iraqi intelligence agents and which was cited by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq war (but has curiously never been cited since then.)
Now, I know the right side of the blogosphere will jump all over this and claim that Suskind is the one who is telling a lie here.
OK, let's look at what's happened when they've swarmed to Bush's defense in the past.
They produced all kinds of criticism of anyone who suggested there might not be WMD in Iraq. By October 2003 the Bush administration was forced to admit that there weren't any. Yet right up until that time (and even on occasion since then) the righty blogosphere was swearing that there were.
They denied the existence of secret prisons outside of U.S. territory. Once again the Bush administration sawed off the limb the righty bloggers were out on in October 2006 when they reversed course and acknowledged that the secret prisons did exist.
They claimed that no one in the administration had anything to do with Robert Novak's unmasking of Valerie Plame's identity. OK, so then they have trouble explaining why Scooter Libby required a Presidential sentence commutation to stay out of prison for committing perjury in the case. Oh, except that they like to blame the Republican special prosecutor (who was appointed by a Republican Congress) and say it was a politically motivated prosecution (facts be damned.)
They claimed that no one in the U.S. Justice Department broke rules in hiring people for political reasons, nor that any U.S. Attorneys were fired because of ongoing investigations. We've since learned that was wrong on two counts, as Monica Goodling has admitted to the first and the second became public in March of last year.
They followed the Bush administration in denying anyone had been waterboarded. Except that the administration later admitted that at least three suspects had been waterboarded. Once again the branch they sawed off was full of righty bloggers who had followed their lying administration out onto a limb.
So go ahead, righty bloggers. Deny the Suskind allegation if you want. But do it on the record so that if this turns out like it usually turns out when you jump up and down and point fingers at those who dare expose the lies of the Bush administration, we can watch you eat crow later.
Nothing like jump up and down and ranting and raving and screaming, "LIAR!" when you don't have any facts yourself.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of the people who talk about how Suskind is full of it have actually read his book.