POLITICS - Has Bush Himself Forgotten

In the article "Plan goes awry" by Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, asks......

But has Bush himself forgotten? That’s an interesting question.

His question is about the Bush response to another question asked by Helen Thomas ("85-year-old doyenne of the White House press corps") at the much televised press conference the other day.

Thomas: Why did you really want to go to war ?

Bush: He launched into a familiar soliloquy about how 9/11 changed everything, how he’d vowed to protect the American people and how “the Taliban provided safe haven for al-Qa’ida."

Thomas: I’m talking about Iraq.

Bush: I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That’s why I went to the Security Council; that’s why it was important to pass [U. N. Resolution] 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.... [We] worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him.

Lyons continues....

Alas, this is false. Regardless of his other sins, Saddam did admit United Nations inspectors. Surely even the most perfervid Bush supporters recall the weeks leading up to the March 2003 invasion when self-styled patriots mocked U.N. weapons experts led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix and Moroccan nuclear arms expert Mohamed ElBaradei. U. N. teams visited sites all over Iraq, finding no sign of forbidden weapons of mass destruction before Bush began his “shock and awe” bombing campaign.

It is then he asks the question above, and.....

It’s hard to know how deeply the visible world affects the president’s ideological obsessions. The New York Times has quoted British government memos depicting Bush telling Prime Minister Tony Blair in January 2003 that he was determined to invade whether U. N. inspectors found Iraqi WMD or not.

Once again, however, most of the White House press gave Bush a free pass, exactly as they did in July 2003, the first time he made the false claim about Saddam stiffing U. N. inspectors.

I remember the UN Inspectors having to leave Iraq when King George started his "shock and awe" war.

Bush and his conservative cadre have accused liberals, and any nay-sayers, of trying to rewrite history. But just who is doing the rewriting? Do we have a President whose idealogical obsessions distort the history he sees? You bet.