Oliver Willis helps set the record straight...again...
By Brad Friedman on 6/13/2014, 3:06pm PT  

As Iraq seems to finally (and predictably) be imploding this week, longtime Republican apologists in this country are returning from their wingnut ghettos to mainstream spotlights once again to pretend this isn't the result of their unprecedented disaster of a criminal foreign policy.

Naturally, even eleven years later, they are still lying to themselves and everyone else about the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, including: The reasons we attacked the country, who did and didn't support the war of choice and why, and what role the entire clusterfuck of a disastrous pointless mess has played in our continuing American history.

Among the best and briefest responses to the newly invigorated round of Bush-era apologia disguised as (naturally, misleading and/or fact-free) Obama-era 'told-ya-so-isms', comes from Kurt Eichenwald on Twitter...

But for a more specific, point-by-point response, please see Oliver Willis' "11 Years and Thousands Of Lives Later, Conservatives Are Still Lying About The Iraq War" published yesterday.

Willis disembowels severalk of the renewed Rightwing history rewrites --- or, as he describes them, "their false assertions about the war they built, prosecuted, lost and covered up" --- as each is being dusted off over the past 48 hours or so by the same long-ago discredited and disreputable con-artists and scoundrels who invented the debacle that broke our country (and so many others) in the first place, before going on to spend years and unspeakable blood and treasure attempting to justify it all.

Among the specific Rightwing myths and insidious contortions of fact being trotted out again, before being expressly disabused and/or accurately corrected by Willis:

  • The Iraq War was a good idea.
  • Everybody supported invading Iraq.
  • Both Democrats and Republicans went to war in Iraq.
  • But Bill Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act.
  • Current and former members of the Obama administration voted for war in Iraq.
  • People die in war all the time. You can't blame Bush.
  • The media opposed the war.

My only disagreement with Willis' response to all of the above: His insistence on describing these Republican extremists, liars and con-artists as "conservatives". They are anything but. That said, he's hardly the only non-Rightwinger who has long made the mistake of allowing Republicanists a once-respectable-ish nomenclature which they never deserved (and, usually, were quite the opposite of.)

Please go read Willis' piece. Unfortunately, his helpful reminders may be coming in all too handy once again in the coming days...

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UPDATE: Oops. Truth about the War on Iraq slips through on air today on Fox 'News', courtesy of Shepard Smith. Watch...

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