Norman Podhoretz’s essay in the December issue of Commentary appears under the provocative title, “Who is Lying About Iraq?” Hint: According to Podhoretz, it’s not the Bush administration.
“Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others,” argues Podhoretz. “This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.”
“I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is,” adds Podhoretz. “Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.”
The publication of Podhoretz’s piece coincides with the White House’s so-called “hit-back” campaign, aiming to counter the increasingly conventional wisdom that the Bush administration twisted intelligence reports prior to going to war. To judge by today’s reaction in the blogosphere, Podhoretz’s piece is succeeding at pumping up the counter-outrage.
“Podhoretz demolishes the canard that the Bush administration lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, not by offering new evidence, but by succinctly and persuasively laying out the facts that demonstrate the absurdity of the charge on which the Democratic Party has apparently decided to risk its fortunes,” claims Power Line. “Podhoretz also disassembles, brick by brick, the structure of lies that Joe Wilson has erected over the last two years.”
“Here in 2005 it is sometimes hard to remember back to a time when what President Bush stated about Saddam was universally accepted as truth — but there was such a time, and it has only been the relentless, slanderous Big Lie tactics of the far left — now hitched up to the Democratic Party as a whole — which has allowed the absurd and asinine concept that there was a lie to get us into Iraq to gain traction,” notes Blogs for Bush. “Historians of the future will marvel that so many people allowed themselves to be hoodwinked so easily.”
Historians of the future? Perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch. But bloggers of the present? Yes!
“I’d like to say that I’m shocked that Democrats are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people with their bogus claims that the President ‘lied’ about Iraq’s WMD programs, but I’m really not,” writes Sister Toldjah. “When you can’t win elections year after year, this is what the opposition is reduced to. And unfortunately the polls out there show that the Democrat’s propaganda campaign against this president regarding the Iraq war is, sadly, working.”
“Harry Reid and the democrats want to revisit the run-up to the war. Again I say, BRING. IT. ON!,” comments Yelling at the Windshield. “Norman Podhoretz makes the case.”
David M, on the other hand, is not entirely convinced the Commentary piece will turn the tide. “Essentially, Podhoretz’s debunking is compelling but doomed,” predicts David. “Certain things we know to be true even though our senses tell us otherwise. We have taught ourselves to overrule our senses because, well, that’s what you do in these circumstances. The Earth is round. Doesn’t look round, doesn’t feel round, but it’s round — trust me. And to vast swaths of the interested public, Bush Lied!!! Is true.”
Not to mention, to vast swaths of bloggers.
“But the record is clear: Bush and co. repeatedly exaggerated, lied, and just plain made stuff up,” writes MiniPundit. “Podhoretz is just wrong.”
“Who Is Lying About Iraq?,” echoes Crooked Timber. “The short answer to this timely question: Norman Podhoretz.”
Kevin Drum provided a longer answer yesterday in the Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal. “Lots of people did believe that Iraq had WMD before the war,” wrote Drum. “The problem Podhoretz doesn’t bother wrestling with, however, is that [later] we discovered that there were also a fair number of people who had been skeptical about Iraqi WMD. … None of these dissents was acknowledged by the Bush administration.”
“Unless you think that going to war is no more serious than planning a marketing campaign for a new brand of toothpaste, all of this contrary evidence should have been publicized and acknowledged along with all the evidence that went in the other direction,” noted Drum. “It wasn’t. Given this, the fact that so many people believed that Saddam had an active WMD program simply doesn’t perform the analytic heavy lifting that Podhoretz thinks it does.”
“In any case,” added Drum, “if it’s really true that the Bush administration did nothing to spin, exaggerate, or lie about WMD before the war, why are war supporters so relentlessly trying to suppress any congressional investigation into this? You’d think they’d welcome it instead. For a bunch of innocent bystanders, they sure are acting awfully guilty.”
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.