The Right continues their penchant to be America’s Pravda. You can always count on them to get the facts wrong and distort history, They Weren’t Paying Attention, Posted by Ed Morrissey at May 1, 2007 02:53 PM, Captain’s Quarters
Today is the fourth anniversary of George Bush’s speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln — the one Democrats and anti-war activists call the “Mission Accomplished” speech. The crew of the carrier flew the banner because their mission had indeed been accomplished
“The crew of the carrier flew the banner” is a fabrication often repeated by a Right to give the war they lied the nation into a some semblance of legitimacy – Bush’s ‘Bannergate’ Shuffle
Asked at a news conference whether the “Mission Accomplished” banner had been prematurely boastful, the president backed away from it, saying it had been put up by the sailors and airmen of the Lincoln to celebrate their homecoming after toppling Saddam’s regime.
Not long afterwards, the White House had to amend its account. The soldiers hadn’t put up the sign; the White House had done the hoisting. It had also produced the banner — contrary to what senior White House officials had said for months. In the end, the White House conceded on those details, but declared them mere quibbles. The point was, they said, that the whole thing had been done at the request of the crewmembers. Even that explanation didn’t sit well with some long-time Bush aides. “They (the White House) put up banners at every event that look just like that and we’re supposed to believe that at this one it was the Navy that requested one?” asked a senior administration official. Others remember staffers boasting about how the president had been specifically positioned during his speech so that the banner would be captured in footage of his speech.
Then there was the claim that Bush jetted in because the carrier was out of range of the Whitehouse helicopter.
On the day of the speech, the Lincoln was only 30 miles from shore but the administration still decided to go ahead with the jet landing. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer admitted that the president “could have helicoptered, but the plan was already in place. Plus, he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing.”
Captain Codpiece and company orchestrated some political theater that costs the taxpayers millions of dollars. Nowhere in their thinking was their some consideration of the the American people or of the solemnity in the death toll that comes with war.
ED, apparently a huge fan of Conservative Potemkin Theatre also notes that by Mission Accomplished that Bush didn’t mean the end of the invasion with this quote,
The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.
He has taken a page out of the Pravda Playbook leaving out this part of the speech,
“In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
And in that same speech Bush put his own Stalinesque spin on reality by equating the invasion of Iraq with 9-11. Not an unimportant point since the Right now frequently likes to claim that neither they or their commander-in-codepiece ever conflated Iraq with 9-11 or Bin laden with Saddam,
The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the “beginning of the end of America.” By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat from the world.
[ ]…The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.
To this day there is no proof that Saddam financed or had any operational ties with al-Qaida. Just about every rational adult in America knows that Saddam had no WMD and was not supplying what he didn’t have, well except Kurt Weldon and Glenn Reynolds.
Bush’s veto of troop funind also showed his contempt for the troops that he’s always hiding behind when he can’t win the war debate on the issues,
Tonight I will explain the reasons for this veto and my desire to work with Congress to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.
That was a year ago. Bush and the Right have been checked out of the Hotel Reality for quite a while. Poll Of Troops: Minority Supports “Surge”
For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war.
What Bush is going to do is drag himself into his office and ask himself if he still approves of the job he’s doing and tomorrow will tell the public that after a long and thoughtful conversation with himself he has decided that he has no choice but to continue to support the the conclusions that he came to after consulting himself. Nothing like living in a mental vacuum to hear what you want to hear. George is doing a great job – a great job at creating terrorism – U.S. Cites 91 Percent Rise In Terrorist Acts in Iraq
The number of terrorism incidents in Iraq — and resulting deaths, injuries and kidnappings — skyrocketed from 2005 to 2006, according to statistics released by U.S. counterterrorism officials yesterday.
But as Captain Ed reminded us in Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech,
We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.
Report: Inspectors find Iraq projects deemed ‘successes’ now crumbling
After attacking Reid over war “is lost” comment, Broder “doubtful” Iraq victory is possible
Has Glenn beck has his rabies booster shot? Beck said Gore using “same tactic” in fight against global warming as Hitler did against Jews
Summary: On his radio program, Glenn Beck stated that Al Gore is using “the same tactic” in his efforts to fight global warming that Adolf Hitler used to vilify Jews in Nazi Germany, but Beck said that Gore’s “goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal.”
Beck also goes on to equate the German eugenics movement to scientists that think that global warming is a real phenomenon. Glenn and his rabid cohorts on the Right are constantly touting the Islamic religion as an imminent threat to the entire world, yet has the blindingly hypocritical gall to accuse most of the United States’ most distinguished scientists of being part of a Hitler-like movement to whip up hysteria about global warimng – Mr. Beck meet Mr. Black. Beck has probably never read Thomas Jefferson or James Madison but he seems all too familiar with the incoherent demagoguery of Goebbels. Glenn and the Right claim to care about national security and the spread of freedom, he might want to study up on the effects that global warming will have on national security, Climate Change and International Security
cumulative impacts of global warming will reach into virtually every country around the globe, threatening ecosystems, human health and already-scarce resources and imperiling the long-term prospects for international peace and stability.
People that are desperate for clean water, food and shelter do not enhance the world’s stability. That’s International Politics 101, but Glenn and his ilk still seem to be playing in the sandbox with their cute little shovels and glow in the dark buckets just looking at the pretty pictures in the comic books because they don’t understand the words yet. One of the major features of propaganda and one suspects that Beck and the other cookie cutter right-wing pundits know this, is that propaganda is intentionally vague and frequently meshes together vastly oversimplified answers to complex issues. It is little wonder that Glenn panders to an audience that abhors complexity. Beck’s recipe, like Limbaugh’s Coulter’s and Cheney’s and hundreds of others on the Right is out of the Joseph Goebbels’s play book,
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
The Long Goodbye 