Josh Marshall's response to "Bush never called Iraq an imminent threat"

"There's no use denying it. It was only a year ago. We were there. We remember."

http://www.hillnews.com/marshall/110503.aspx

I really don't know how much more I can take

the parallels to Orwell's distopia in his book 1984 are so striking you almost wonder whether the Bushies have taken that book as their model for governance...

war is peace

From Orwell's 1984:
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/4/

Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened.

Or again, The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.
<snip>

Read this and be very afraid...

If I were to call a RW talk radio show as "Winston", where should I say I'm from?

Oceania

Just watch out for those rats...

We're going to need it. This is why Bob Graham said you'd need a grammar lesson to decipher exactly what this Administration really said about Iraq and WMD. They were very clever, especially in Congressional reports and official speeches. It's the media where they usually went wild.

But, there's documentation (i saw a writer on CSPAN, although who it was is now escaping me) that documented that he said it in at least 6 other speeches.

Having a brain cramp as to whom the writer was. If anyone saw that WJ, please chime in.
The Professor

Here's one example. A reporter says Bush said Saddam is an imminent threat, but Bush didn't actually use those words. I just googled that October speech and I didn't find 'imminent threat' in it. This happened alot. Even if Bush didn't use the actual words, there are enough other words that imply the same thing. And when reporters used the words 'imminent threat', this Administration didn't correct them.

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/10/08102002135121.asp

but not the speech.

clever.

But, this reporter on Washington Journal refuted a pro-Georgie caller with a recitation of a list of speeches where Bush did use the word or a synonym. His references were something like 6 speeches. His whole approach was "He didn't say it in the SOTU, but he did say it on such & such date to such & such audience . . ." and so on.

He really had his facts and his act together. I just can't remember his name.
The Professor

Why, that completely refutes the idea that he said it was imminent!

NOT!!!!

This RWTP is worse than ridiculous. Any Pundit that seriously tries to use it ought to be laughed off the stage. Rich Lowery went for that one the other day, and I thought, oh, man, they are scraping the bottom of the rhetoric scum bucket with this howler!

OK, so the danger "wasn't imminent." WTF did we go to war then?

Oh, so Smirky can't be blamed that it turns out there were no WMDs, and therefore no imminent danger, because all along he never said it was imminent.

How about how all along he said it was EVEN MORE URGENT AND THREATENING than "imminent"--and it STILL turned out to be a LIE LIE LIE!

These guys must think we're complete idiots like them.

We have always been at war with MiddleEast.

He really didn't---I read it with my own eyes in my new Time Magazine. He said HE DIDN'T PLACE that banner there. And he absolutely did not. But then again, I truly never thought that HE actually got out a step ladder and a staple gun and climed up that high and slapped that puppy up there. So, technically, HE DID NOT PLACE IT THERE.........you see for the right wing Christians they can hold up that statement and say he didn't lie about the banner nor did the lie in the statement that lied about the lie was not really a lie because the lie of the lie of the.....oh, you know what I mean. And his right wing Christians fondle their crosses as they go off in their daze and shout: He's a moral, honorable man!!! Hitler should have been so lucky to have followers like these.

It would blow his entire preemptive doctrine, which he used fear & false intel to sell.

Let it go...attack preemption. attack the lies he used to sell preemption.

Preemption is a frightening doctrine. Preemption based on lies, even more so. This might be the best way to go because he can't weasle out of this at all.

he said he was going to kill them. Can't you see the difference?

(weather he ACTUALLY said it or not- I think I remember Cheney saying it on Meet the Press) then why the urgency to rush to war? This is one of those total cliches where actions speak louder than words. If they now want to claim he wasn't an imminent threat then why weren't the inspectors allowed to stay? Why wasn't there more time to work with the UN? They can get technical all they like but there was a rush to war and I don't care what words were used. War is war is war is war and we went under deception any way you slice it.

:kick: