Like The Other Charlotte, I was curious about the latest liberal meme: We never said that Bush lied about Iraq (see TOC’s “Meme Update,” Nov. 22). So I checked the column that TOC linked: Richard Cohen’s public scolding in the Washington Post of those who dare to assert that congressional Democrats have accused Bush of lying about WMDs and other matters):
“An extensive computer search by myself and a Post researcher can come up with no such accusation. That’s prudent. After all, it’s not clear if Bush lied about Iraq or was merely the ‘useful idiot’ of those who did.”
Now, I’m not on the Washington Post payroll, so I have to do my own computer searches. So I ran this phrase through Google: “Democrat Congress Bush lie Iraq.”
Funny, but I immediately found this column from last Friday by liberal columnist Morton Kondracke:
“[Democratic Sen. John] Kerry also asserted that Bush did not rely on faulty intelligence before the war, ‘as Democrats did,’ but waged ‘a concerted campaign to twist the intelligence to justify a war (he) had already decided to fight.’
“And, said Kerry, ‘How are the same Republicans who tried to impeach a president over whether he misled a nation about an affair going to pretend it does not matter if the administration intentionally misled the country into war?’…
“In June, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, held a mock impeachment inquiry based on the ‘Downing Street mem’ that claimed Bush had made up his mind to go to war even as he was saying that Hussein could still come into compliance with United Nations resolutions.
“Kerry repeated that allegation on Monday in the course of charging that ‘the war in Iraq was and remains one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history.’
“Newspapers also have quoted Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) as saying that ‘this administration has committed more impeachable offenses than any other government in history’ and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) as saying that ‘lying to the Congress about a large public purpose such as Iraq’ fit the constitutional test of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ better than lying about sex, the offense that led Republicans to impeach former President Bill Clinton.”
Richard, if I were you, I’d get the Post to fire that researcher of yours.