BUSH DIDN’T LIE; PEOPLE DIED
Robert Prather is tiring of the Bush Lied meme and cites a piece in today’s Boston Globe showing that it’s still in full throttle. Robert answers most of the charges, although he’s likely preaching to the choir on this one: this seems to be on the level of the Clinton impeachment saga, where no amount of evidence or logic will dislodge the other side from their position.*
In another post, he cites an excellent Anne Applebaum piece in today’s WaPo on Saddam’s mass graves. She correctly notes the therapeutic effect of getting this out:
Compiling the record of that collaboration does matter , and not just to the writers of history books. If the Baathist records are left rotting in courtyards and basements, or stored in some underground bunker in Langley, they will forever remain the focus of the same kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories that the regime’s spies once tried to document, and the true history of Hussein’s Iraq will become impossible to tell. But if the files are credibly maintained, if they are used to write new textbooks, if they are openly discussed, if they are posted on Web sites and displayed in museums, then they will profoundly alter the culture of secrecy that has dominated Iraq, and most of the Middle East, for so long.
Indeed. It worked in postwar Germany and seems to be working now in South Africa.
*And, yes, this works in both directions.
Hmmmm… a blog preaching to the choir, eh? Go figure. I thought blogs were the new form of civil discourse that would accelerate the democratization of the post-industrial age.
Heh.
Indeed.