Just as some crazy conservatives confidently predicted Hillary’s imminent indictment in the 1990s, up until today, Bush-haters were salivating at the approaching indictment of their bête noire, Karl Rove. Today, those angry leftists are gnashing their teeth. They were all convinced that because they so hated Karl Rove, he had to have committed a crime.
They pinned their hopes of the legend of Fitzmas, that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would indict this top advisor to President George W. Bush, the man they really, really, really hated. As we learned yesterday, that will not come to pass. Karl Rove is not the crook they made him out to be.
Lacking evidence of a Republican’s crimes, however, has yet to stop these leftists from imagining the worst of their ideological adversaries. All over LA, I continue to see bumper stickers accusing the president of lying. And although three major investigations have yet to produce a single scrap of evidence that he deceived the American people (and the world) in the run-up to the liberation of Iraq, allegations of the president’s dishonesty remain an article of faith for Bush-haters.
When you talk to some of these left-wingers, they sound just like their bumper stickers, repeating the mantra that “Bush Lied.” When confronted with with facts, they don’t respond with arguments, but with angry accusations against the president and his team (and even against the president’s defenders). They don’t “need” any evidence to back up their claims. They just know the president’s dishonest.
One such smug individual is former CBS News Producer Mary Mapes. She continues to attack the conservative bloggers who questioned the authenticity of the documents she used in her 60 Minutes II report alleging that then-Lt. George W. Bush shirked his National Guard Service.
Alleging that there “never has been any definitive proof that they [the documents ] were forged or falsified in any way,” she attempts to change the focus of the story. (Via Best of the Web.) Those bloggers — and experts in the authentication of documents — made a solid case that they were forgeries. And she failed to rebut the evidence they provided.
The real issue is that it wasn’t their responsibility to provide such “definitive proof;” it was her responsibility as a journalist to prove the authenticity of the documents. Although she failed to do that, she ran the story claiming they were authentic.
She has so far failed to trace the documents to their supposed author, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, then-Lt. Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas National Guard. She got them from a dubious source, perennial Bush critic, Bill Burkett, who claims that he got him from a “Lucy Ramirez.” Mapes has yet to identify this woman.
As I said in March, if Mapes really wanted to prove that these documents were genuine, she would go to the Holiday Inn in Houston (where Ramirez allegedly gave Burkett the documents) and see what she could find out.
Perhaps, we conservatives should set up a fund to send her to Texas to trace the chain of control of these documents back to Burkett Killian. I’ll pony up a few hundred if other bloggers are willing to join me. We’ll put our money where our mouths are, so certain are we that she will never be able to find that Ms. Ramirez.
For Ms. Mapes, the MSM’s poster child, while critics of the president don’t need to prove their points, conservatives who take issue with such critics need “definite proof” of our arguments. And it’s they who define what that definite proof is.
When the investigation does not yield the results Bush-haters want, they will redefine the terms of the inquiry — and the standards of proof. (They seem to want investigations only to prove what they already believe.) For the left, as Lorie Byrd puts it, echoing a point John Leo made, assertion has replaced truth:
When assertion replaces truth, language no longer has definite meaning assigned to it, and civility becomes a thing of nostalgia, the table is set for a dysfunctional debate that not only fails to educate the public, but misleads and misinforms them continually.
(Via Mary Katharine Ham @ Hugh Hewitt.)
It because Bush-haters are so misinformed that they continue to claim (without any proof) that the President is a liar while heralding as a hero a Democrat discredited as dishonest (by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report).
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com
UPDATE: I just loved how Lorie Byrd titled her piece, linking this post: WE WILL KNOW LIBERALS ARE IN SEARCH OF TRUTH WHEN THEY START LOOKING FOR LUCY RAMIREZ. Thanks, Lorie. And readers, check her stuff out at her new home: Wizbang!
Dan, slightly OT here, but I just love the comment thread in your earlier post – your first link in #0. It’s a GP classic. Sterling examples of QP / PP bald-faced sock puppetry, of Kevin lobbing accusations in the face of reality, and other “typical” GP comment thread foibles. 🙂
On the Mary Mapes front: I have to say, I read the comment thread to her Puffington Host (h/t Taranto) article, and it is encouraging that even the Lefties of PH openly rebuke her as a nutter and “get it” that the Ramirez documents were, in fact, forged.
So – Hmmm. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope for them on the Rove, Wilson, “Bush lied!!!” fronts as well? As they say – accepting the truth comes slowly, in stages. (Denial, anger, bargaining, etc., etc. Throw in a few more election defeats.)
Bravo! Excellent post indeed. Thank you.
Dan, good post. Mary Mapes is struggling to keep her 15 minutes of limelight going… maybe she can take over from Rev Bill Moyers and the pulpit puppet of the wild Left at PBS. Maybe she’s doing the Charlie Rose thing… hang out, work to be relevant, cater to your base, hope you can regain credibility. Nawh, it would never work twice.
Honestly, let’s let Mary Mapes slide back into the sewers. Let her go. And I don’t mean a gig at 60 Minutes or Sunday Morning. Let her go.
Have you ever actually heard Karl Rove when he pontificates on the subject of gay and lesbian Americans in front of the Religious Right coalitions whose votes he solicits? He’s not your pal GPW. Not doing something illegal does not mean he’s not a complete asshole.
Just as Dan and Bruce “know” that because Bush is a Republican, he walks on water as America’s Savior-in-Chief? The GOP man on horseback thats going to ride in and Save The Day? Talk about “legends”. Pfft.
And BTW, gambling on the odds that a life-time politician isn’t a habitual liar is…..just unrealistic. Maybe you are willing to bet real money on that proposition, but I’m not. If you are, send me an e-mail, I’ve got a business proposition from Nigeria you really should look into.
But feel free to call me cynical and jaded about politicians and politics, but really, that just means I’m an American. Its a more American tradition than apple-pie in fact.
Nawh Gramps, it means you are in full tilt BDS… or not taking your meds.
Gramps proves the point: The GayLeft will never EVER let facts or the truth get in the way of their unquenchable hatred.
Rove wasn’t indicted despite and no matter how long the GayLeft prayed at the altar of Chris Matthews… he isn’t guilty… so, now we’re back to the old nonsense: “He Hates Us. He Really Does.”
Right Gramps. God save our struggle from those on the GayLeft who hazard all we’ve achieved for nothing of substance but to pander to their partisan hatred. You remain a big part of the problem.
Gryph, you’ve really taken a downward spiral since the first time I saw you here. Sorry, it’s true.
Regular readers, which I thought you were, know that Dan and Bruce don’t view Bush as a savior, nor as a true or consistent conservative; and criticize Bush, and only view the Administration’s actions as good (e.g., in GWOT) where the objective facts warrant it. Making your remarks “off” from their starting premise.
Um, Patrick, you should know better. We’ve criticized the president on this blog, so it seems you’re projecting here. Once again, why do critics of the president assume that his supporters think he’s some kind of infallible leader?
While we accept that he’s far from perfect, they’re the ones who deify Bush, only they see him as a dark deity — the devil.
As to Karl Rove, I never called him my pal; I just said he’s not a crook.
Bush comiitted the unpardonable sin, just as Reagan did.
He stood up for the United States before all others. That is the fundamental reason liberals hate him.
#7 As much as that *sounds* hyperbolic… I think you’re right.
Texas? Send her to the moon. She’s just as likely to find the evidence there.
Jay in #9, LOL. 🙂
Great point!
“they continue to claim (without any proof) that the President is a liar”
How about the following:
“[W]e gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.” –George W. Bush on the U.N. weapons inspections and lying about why we invaded Iraq, July 14, 2003. Obviously, Saddam HAD allowed the inspectors back in and they were doing their job.
“[Saddam] chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”–George W. Bush repeating his earlier lie about why we invaded Iraq, Jan. 27, 2004
I suppose you could argue that he just didn’t know the inspectors were in Iraq doing everything they were supposed to at the time he invaded. But that argument falters since he apparently knew they were there since he warned them to get out before the bombs started. So a lie it has to be.
Ian S, jump through the hoops of DailyKos because you’re not only talking out of the top of your hat on this one… it’s easy to prove you fundamentally, unalterably, undeniably WRONG.
As late as Nov 8 ’02, UN SecCounRes 1441 called for Saddam to provide “full access” by IAEA and MOVIC to Iraqi facilities, people, etc.
Remember the stories of Iraqi scientists as late as Thanksgiving ’02 saying that they couldn’t be forthcoming even IF outside Iraq for fear of what Saddam would do to their extended families? Hans Blix even admitted that was likely true, but it didn’t mean much to him. LOL.
Come on Ian S, quit reading the DailyKos and al Jazeera for your primary content on these issues. Even NancyPee-lousy ain’t doing that anymore.
Gheez.
Rove is a hateful little man but he doesn’t deserve the pathological fury that he receives. If the Left could just put 10% of their obsession with hurting Bush, and anyone associated with him, and directed it towards terrorists and other enemies much of the debates between the two sides of this war would dissolve.
My primary complaint with Dems is they are much more interested in destroying fellow Americans than they are in destroying American enemies. Let go of Bush and Rove. They aren’t going anywhere. You’ve wasted 6 years of your lives and have nothing to show for it.
I feel one thing is certain, a Democratic candidate that can actually win the White House will be a candidate most of the left-wing will hate almost as much as Bush. They’ll be quieter since abortion will be safe and many of his/her appointees will be center-left supporters, but the candidate will not be allowed to put anything before the needs of the U.S.
The really sad thing about Mapes & co. is this: it’s virtually certain that Lt. George Bush missed at least some of his drills. (I’m a contemporary; I was around, alive, awake, and interested at the time, although I didn’t know Bush myself. I base my judgement on my knowledge of how the Reserves work, and worked then.)
The missed drills, if established, could have been a continuous source of valid, low-level snark — valuable from a bushwhacking point of view. But no, they had to go for the gold. People go to jail for AWOL.
And, of course, they ran smack into what they don’t and will never understand, which is that the rules are such that it’s almost impossible for a Reservist to achieve AWOL while not directly on active duty, and Bush never came within miles of infringing those regulations. Rather kept bleating that the story “couldn’t get traction”. It never seemed to occur to him that he was on glare ice with bald tires until he and the whole bunch went for the ditch at full speed.
Maybe they ought to get some variant of the Darwin Award, but Mapes needs a prize named after her. Most persistent defense of a lost cause that should never have been defended in the first place, a bust of Robert E. Lee in blackface and a $5 gift certificate to Taco Bell.
Regards,
Ric
#13: What part of “he wouldn’t let them in” is so hard for you to get your brain around?
Ian did u live through those years or is all your knowledge from reading or what? Because Sadamm kicked inspectors out then let em back in many times. He obstructed inspectors and moved stuff he wasnt suppose to. He at the very least “acted” guilty of having and hiding WMD’s. And it’s also very bizare behavior of a man to lose his country when all he had to do was quit shooting at American planes and give liberal UN inspectors free reign to inspect away. He d still be on his many thrones killing hundreds of thousands of his ppl and American liberals would be still oblivious.
#18: “all he had to do was quit shooting at American planes and give liberal UN inspectors free reign to inspect away.”
And that’s PRECISELY what the inspectors were doing when Bush warned them that the bombing was about to commence.
Bush lied in saying that Saddam refused to let the inspectors back in. He repeated that same lie in 2004. He’s a liar. And the American people are finally waking up to that fact.
Yeah, I think our friend in North Korea is also defying us. When do we invade? Here is where Republicans always go wrong (because they cannot stand to admit this war is a bit of a mess, and we don’t HAVE to be there, and they feel bad they were lied to, and have a little battered wife syndrome thing going).
With inspectors there, and our ENORMOUS military power, what the hell was he gonna do? If we had any intelligent people in intelligence we might have guessed that “maybe he needs to sound tough to maintain his power in this unstable part of the globe, and so he pretends to have weapons”.
And all the times Bush lied, they were not about blow jobs. He lied (or misled, whatever you want to say) about Iraq having nukes, about the mushroom cloud, about knowing where they were, about his office having nothing to do with Plame, about those people being fired, about not being interested in nation building, he delayed and avoided the 9/11 commission, he said no one knew the levees might go 24 hours after a video shows someone telling him they could go. him and his administration have a little lying problem.
here is the bad thing: clinton lied to save his marriage and a girl’s embarrassment and his family and his public image, and bush lied about STUFF THAT REALLY MATTERS.
that is why people have their “silly” BUSH LIED bumper stickers.
#20 – Mikyl, are you unaware of the contradictions in your own post?
In your second paragraph, you rightly attribute the universally-held pre-war view that Saddam had WMD to (1) bad intelligence and (2) Saddam trying to practice a face-saving deception on everyone.
Then you claim “Bush lied”??? How could Bush have possibly lied, when all he did was act on a universally held, universally reported view, that you yourself admit arose from a combination of (1) bad intelligence and (2) Saddam’s intentional deceptions and game-playing?
Really.
Bush didn’t lie. Clinton did (and under oath, no less – the nation’s chief law enforcement officer). Face it. Deal with it.
I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that it was universally believed, even inside the administration, that Saddam had WMD. Is it from the media? A memo from Ken Mehlman? I think it’s another convenient fiction the right dreamed up to excuse its blind dogmatic insistence that Saddam was a threat in the first place.
It has been repeatedly documented that Rumsfeld and other neocons wanted to go to war and cooked the intelligence in part by creating their own office of intelligence at the Pentagon. Their objective was to create a pretext for invading Iraq.
The latest documentation is in “Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.” The book is by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor whose earlier volume on the Persian Gulf war is considered the best narrative on the subject. (And, yes, the new book is quite critical of Cilnton, too.)
It’s pretty sickening to hear Bush apologists constantly claiming that everyone inside the adminstration thought we’d find WMD in Iraq. It simply isn’t true and if Bush was completely oblivious to the intense power struggle over this subject, he is no less frightening in his incompetence.
#21: “Bush didn’t lie.”
Bzzzzt. Yes, he did. I’ve proven it with quotes.
#22: “if Bush was completely oblivious to the intense power struggle over this subject, he is no less frightening in his incompetence.”
Of course he could be both a liar AND incompetent. Rather than have the “movement” tarred by Bush’s failures, conservatives are already pushing the meme that Bush is not really a conservative. The problem with that http://tinyurl.com/h3jh9 :
“the real flaw in their argument is akin to that of Trotskyites who, when confronted with the failures of communism in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union, would claim that real communism had never been tried.”
Maybe they’re using this approach because so many “conservatives” come from a Trotskyite background.
““Bush didn’t lie….Yes he did. I’ve proven it with quotes.”
Nope. Wrong again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#22 – More historical revisionism from Lefties.
ALL Democrat leaders, including Kennedy and Kerry and all the Clinton people, and ALL major nation’s intelligence service without exception, believed in the 1990s and the early 00s, up to the summer of 2003, that Saddam was a threat on the WMD front.
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002 – Many other Democrat quotes here: http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/demsonwmds.php
And you know what? They were right. Maybe Saddam didn’t have WMD stockpiles all ready to go. Maybe they didn’t find a neat row of nukes all labeled “London”, “Tokyo”, “New York”, etc. But they did find a whole series of research programs, scientists, materials and manufacturing sites where Saddam was going to re-constitute his WMD the second the world stopped looking.
Just read the Duelfer Report – it’s all there!
Now granted, the intel people (led by Democrat-appointed George Tenet, etc.) presented the case badly and misled the Bush people into doing the same. The intel agencies said there would be stockpiles. They (the world intel agencies) missed a key shift in Saddam’s strategy. Ever heard of “manufacture on demand”? That was Saddam’s new strategy, in effect, adopted in the mid to late 1990s. The intel agencies, and the Bush people, missed the shift (or didn’t present it right).
U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus discusses Saddam’s newer strategy in fractured English in this link. “The Iraq policy long before the war was to… develop its capabilities to produce weapons… for the conflict situation [as it arose], not to produce for storage and [thus] create a problem of storage management.”
#25 cont –
Now, interestingly, it is equally true that there were huge elements of deception in the whole matter, by and between Saddam and his people, as well.
As detailed in the above article, Saddam wanted to deceive his own commanders into thinking they had WMD stockpiles (chem weapons), and it was always “the other commander in the next unit over” who had them. And Saddam’s research people for bioweapons, nuclear weapons and missiles wanted – out of fear for their own lives – that their stuff was very far along, when it might not have always been.
There is no contradiction between the Rolf Ekeus understanding of Saddam’s WMD and the Foreign Affairs understanding. Here is the overall picture, as it looks today:
1) Saddam unquestionably had WMDs (chemical) in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he used them on the Iranians and on his own people.
2) After Gulf War 1, Saddam came under pressure to dispose of his WMDs.
3) Saddam continued to have WMDs (chemical) and research programs (nuclear and bio) and hide them from U.N. inspectors until at least the mid-1990s (possibly the late 1990s), as revealed by a key 1995 defector.
4) Saddam apparently reduced, destroyed or buried his chem weapon stockpiles in the late 1990s or early 00s, in line with the Rolf Ekeus interpretation (Saddam would keep the capability to re-make the chem weapons if and when he needed them). HOWEVER:
– He did not stop his nuclear, bio, or missile research programs (see Duelfer report).
– He did everything possible to try to make people (his own, plus foreign countries) THINK he still had chem weapon stockpiles. And his own people, fearing for their lives, encouraged him in that. (See the Foreign Affairs article.)
Bottom line: The world’ intel agencies got it partly right (again see the Duelfer report), and partly wrong. What they got wrong, they got wrong partly through incompetence, and partly because Saddam himself was quite deliberately trying to keep everyone guessing, or to play both sides of the game.
Very bottom line: Bush didn’t lie, i.e., didn’t state any falsehoods intentionally. donny, if that sickens you, too bad; I’m sickened by your inability to process the available facts.
Calarato, well written; they just can’t leave failed slogans behind.
I’m waiting for the first history book written by the Democrat Party’s PC friends in academia when that canard is reduced to writing as a fact. It’s coming, for sure.
#25 Calarato — June 15, 2006 @ 12:10 pm – June 15, 2006
Just read the Duelfer Report – it’s all there!
I, for one, am not going to plow through a 1000 page (or so) report to try to find the nuggets that you say are there. I’ve read the “Key Findings” portions of what appears to be the relevant web pages and, quite frankly, they do not support your case.
Aside from that, Colin Powell, in his dog-and-pony show at the United Nations in–when was it?–Feb. 2003, displayed diagrams and pictures that he alleged showed WMDs and/or WMD production facilities. If the Bush Administration was able to obtain the diagrams and pictures for Powell’s dog-and-pony show, it strains credulity to believe that they would not know where the supposed WMDs and/or WMD production facililties were, and that they could not saunter up to them after the invasion and have their embedded reporters take plenty of pictures to confirm their case.
They did not do that. Which makes their their basis for going to war against Iraq highly dubious.
From #26 Now, interestingly, it is equally true that there were huge elements of deception in the whole matter, by and between Saddam and his people, as well.
As detailed in the above article, Saddam wanted to deceive his own commanders into thinking they had WMD stockpiles (chem weapons)…
This may be true, but, moreover, Saddam wanted to deceive his own people into believing that he had chemical weapons stockpiles. He had, after all, used chemical weapons on rebellious Kurds in 1988 during the Iran/Iraq war. The rebellious Kurds in the north of Iraq had sided with the Iranians during the war, in hopes of freeing themselves from Iraq, and joining with the Kurdish regions in western Iran and southeastern Turkey to form their own country Kurdistan. (Some of that battle was fought in Germany in the 1980s, where the Kurdish PKK engaged in terrorist operations.) The irony for Republicans who in their faux wailing about Saddam killing his own people, is that, after Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds became known, the Reagan Administration tried to blame it on Iran–not Iraq–and it was only after an outcry from people outside of the Reagan Administration–primarily Democrats who then dominated Congress–that the administration had to admit that it was their ally Saddam who had done the gassing. With, most probably, weapons whose precursors had been shipped to Saddam from the US with export licenses granted by the Reagan Administration.
Back to the topic from the cited portion of comment #26. Why would Saddam want to deceive his own people into believing that he had chemical weapons stockpiles? Quite simple: to reduce the likelihood that they might rebel against him. Iraqis probably knew what he had done against the rebellious Kurds. It really is quite as simple as that.