My other headline would’ve been, “And in other news, Karl Rove continues to lie through his teeth.”

Apparently, his latest idiotic lie is to rewrite the history of the 2002 vote on the AUMF. His new lie is that Congress, not the White House, pushed for a pre-election vote. If you remember, the vote on this bill happened right before the 2002 midterm elections, putting a lot of (at least imagined) pressure on Democrats to authorize the war.

This is the worst sort of lie, brazenly false and key to understanding the history of 2002 and of this war. The war vote and the election are inextricably tied. In fact, this is a key aspect of the Bush White House. Major policy initiatives have ALWAYS been lined up against federal elections. It’s all they know how to do, win elections. Actually governing is a secondary concern to this administration.

Credit where it’s due, though. At least some former White House staffers are disputing Rove’s lie. This could mark some of the first honest moments for these people. Hopefully, these corrections will make it easier for the press to show Rove’s lie for what it is.

It’s amazing Rove would even consider trying this out. For example, all of this recent “well, I opposed the war, but didn’t say it out loud” stuff going on is really a reaction to the central reality of that vote: No one wanted to go into an election year on the losing side of a war vote that was a) going to pass anyway, and b) enjoyed at least lukewarm support (~45%) among the American voters. Rightly or wrongly (I believe wrongly), Democrats and some Republicans believed that not voting for this bill could cost the Democrats seats in that election.

Of course, we’ve already forgotten how unpopular the war was in 2002. It’s hard for me to forget the size and number of protests at the time, especially since several happened just outside my window.

Let’s not let a liar like Karl Rove rewrite history, please.

2 days before Ari Fleischer told the press and the American people that Bush wasn’t sure whether inspections had reached a dead end, he said to President Aznar, “No matter what happens, we’ll be in Baghdad by the end of March.” Hadn’t made up his mind, my ass.

Fred Kaplan provides a good rundown of Bush’s speech in Cleveland. If nothing else, the speech lays out why Bush isn’t going change course without prodding from Congress. He’s never been accountable in his life for anything and this won’t change now that he’s President. Congress needs to set a firm timetable and articulate that this isn’t a precipitous withdrawal, but a managed, principle-driven redeployment. Those are the challenges, and it’s finally good to see a Republican senator back a redeployment bill. (via Atrios)

I didn’t know which title to go with, so I chose both. That permalink should be AWESOME.

Anyway, by way of Atrios, I found a blog post by Andrew Sullivan that takes a look at Bill Kristol’s latest at the Weekly Standard. Take a look, it’s worth reading.

Message to Bill Kristol: Policy around the Iraq war isn’t about winning a political battle. Please stop talking about it as such. Most critics, Democrats in Congress included, would shut up about war policy if we believed that the policy was sound. And, using military metaphors about political machinations while talking about war policy is absurd. You’re not a soldier nor are you sacrificing anything aside from your reputation. Join Fouad Ajami in the remedial metaphors class. Thanks.

From David Broder’s column today:

Now, many conservatives are up in arms about Walton “throwing the book” at Libby.

…

Their bigger complaint is that the White House official’s conviction on felony counts of lying and obstruction of justice was a byproduct of a “leak” investigation that itself was unnecessary.

…

Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine — a further provocation to conservatives.

I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.

I have two words for Broder and conservatives who are complaining about the unfairness of what happened to poor Scooter Libby:

Bill Clinton

I have two more words, F*** Y** to these people who would pardon their friend only because he’s their friend but wouldn’t go to bat for anyone else. As for David Broder, this is the same guy who, when Bill Clinton was getting excoriated for perjury about a blow job in an investigation stemming from a supposed crooked land deal (for which no evidence was found), called Clinton’s selfishness “staggering.” All because he felt that a personal affair wasn’t something Congress has any business prosecuting.

Take a look at this 1998 editorial from Virginia Postrel in Reason Magazine:

The public is right about this much: Bill Clinton the man has indeed become embroiled in a scary and fundamentally unjust process. It is wrong to let prosecutors loose to pursue individuals, rather than crimes, until they find something that sticks. It is also wrong, except in extreme cases, to force people to testify about the intimate details of their private lives. Both practices severely erode the protections citizens expect to enjoy in a free society.

But Washington is also right. Clinton is not just a man. He is president of the United States. As I’ve noted in an earlier editorial, Clinton the president actively supported the very laws and procedures from which he now demands exemption. (See “License to Grill,” April.) In all his appeals for sympathy, the man who cruised into office hailing “the year of the woman” and condemning Clarence Thomas has never suggested that what has happened to him should never happen to another American. He has not even suggested that we dump the independent counsel law. His defense has been completely self-centered; his selfishness is, as Broder notes, “staggering.”

It’s amazing people can write these things then turn around a mere few years later and say, well, Scooter Libby is a good man, he was prosecuted wrongly, and should be let go. With Bill Clinton, Washington was “right” to go after him, but with Scooter Libby, also a public official with an oath and a duty to do what’s right for the public, hey, he made a mistake but he’s a good guy.

So, let’s set this straight. Scooter Libby originally committed acts he was asked to testify about that were part of an effort to discredit Joseph Wilson, former Ambassador who was sent to Niger to determine whether Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from the African nation. Because the White House didn’t like the conclusion Wilson came to, they attempted to discredit Wilson by claiming his wife, a covert CIA agent, chose Wilson through nepotism and not because he was qualified, implying that perhaps CIA had an agenda they were pushing.

Libby lied about that. He lied about attempting to discredit someone who would’ve slowed down our march into war. I consider that serious, in fact, and almost by definition a political act. He abused his power, including the knowledge he had of Plame’s covert status and employment, to use that as a political tool. Not only did he do this, but he was dumb enough then to lie about it. Unlike Bill Clinton’s error, there is no understandable reason why he would lie about it. As Kevin Drum wrote:

Take Bill Clinton. He lied too when he denied having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, but in his case everyone knew exactly why he had lied: because he didn’t want anyone to know he was getting blowjobs in the Oval Office. And most of us took that into account. First, because it plainly had nothing to do with the official exercise of executive power, and second, because pretty much everyone figured they might very well have done exactly the same thing in his position. It was understandable human weakness. So while we might not have approved, most of the public decided it wasn’t a hanging offense.

But Libby is a different case entirely. The conservative community wants us to believe that Valerie Plame wasn’t really undercover at all. They also want us to believe that outing her was, in fact, part of an entirely legitimate effort to explain that Dick Cheney hadn’t been responsible for sending Joe Wilson to Niger. And finally, they want us to believe that none of this was part of a coordinated plan. Plame’s name was merely mentioned in an offhand way here and there when reporters brought up questions about Wilson’s trip.

But if that’s the case, then why did Libby lie? Deliberately and repeatedly? Richard Armitage fessed up almost immediately. Ari Fleischer fessed up. Karl Rove had to be pushed, but eventually he fessed up too. Only Libby lied.

Why? If nobody actually did anything wrong, what was he hiding?

I don’t understand either, and I wish his defenders would take a moment to explain the difference between the two cases. Ultimately, there isn’t any and by my measure, what Libby did is worse and, quite frankly, inexplicable. We will probably never know the extent to which there was a coordinated effort to smear Wilson, and we will never know what actually transpired, since most of it is sealed with the grand jury.

Or, as Virginia Postrel wrote, they could argue to change the law. They’re not doing that, though, so clearly Libby must be guilty. That’s a clever argument to impugn anyone you disagree with. She’s smart, that Postrel lady.

I tend to find Atrios a bit negative on most things, but his post today on the Iraq war seems about right. There really is no way to “fix” this without a change in the country’s priorities. As the rhetoric is now, the only reason we continue to spend the massive amounts we do on the war is because we’re “supporting the troops.” There really hasn’t been the kind of appetite needed to sustain a large-scale foreign aid package on the same order of magnitude as the war funding, nor are we likely to do something like that without continuing to prefer the U.S. contractors who are doing such a great job at overcharging us right now.

That’s why I end up supporting redeployment plans that pull the troops out faster than slower. Keeping troops in Iraq at these levels simply isn’t helping, the surge itself is folly, and no intermediate plan will happen while this President is in office. The best we can do is redeploy now and then work on convincing the American people that the way to fix this mess is to fund reconstruction in Iraq with an open contracting process that respects local needs as much as it does our own foreign policy interests.

Every time I think of this, by the way, I think of what Rep. Ron Paul said during the debate that go Rudy to pounce on him. We need to face the fact that foreign policy choices lead to consequences, and that terrorists don’t “hate our freedom.” They are responding to decades of short-sighted foreign policy and either perceived or real slights.

Think about some of the stupidity displayed just planning and executing this war. The latest examples just boggle the mind. The litany of errors and the sheer naiveté shown in planning this war will have consequences. To say otherwise is being dishonest.

A prominent Iraqi blogger is fleeing Iraq along with her family. The New York Times has a bit on her and her writing. What struck me was a quote the Times highlighted from her final post:

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq’s history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven’t been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn’t know what our neighbors were- we didn’t care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

I spend a lot of time railing George W. Bush’s presidency and the incompetence at the top, but I want to take a moment to remind everyone that we all had a hand in this. While hundreds of thousands protested in the largest protests since Vietnam, the media became stenographer for the White House. While dozens of experts raised questions about intelligence, Iraqi WMD, and terrorism, Judith Miller and the New York Times were busy making sure they continued to have access. While many of us craved for more information, for more facts, and for more insight, the TV pundits and anchors tried not to offend the administration.

And while the media was ignoring their fundamental responsibility at this critical moment, the rest of us let them. We let the White House get away with the same incompetence in making the case for war as they later demonstrated executing it.

Then, on top of that, we let concerns about one candidate’s verbosity and stiffness override demonstrated incompetence. We elected a man whose sole virtue was that he was an everyman. This, even though he grew up as privileged as a celebrity with a father who was wealthy and who walked the halls of power. We elected a man who only had one accomplishment to his name prior to suing his way to the presidency, and that accomplishment was kicking his alcoholism and drug abuse.

John Kerry was a good man and would’ve made a fine president. Al Gore was a fine man and would’ve made an even better President. Instead, we let fabricated, right-wing narratives about “inventing the Internet” and Swift Boats shape our discourse. This reflects poorly on us.

Though the media takes some of the blame, we let him get elected and we let the media become fat and lazy. So, when I read all of these missives around the Internet whining about how the bloggers are pissed, I wonder, “Why aren’t we even more angry?” In 2002 we didn’t get angry enough and we got the Iraq War. In 2004, we didn’t get angry enough and we got George W. Bush for 4 more years.

Let’s not make this mistake again. In 2008, participate in the process. Read more blogs, get active, volunteer and get out and vote. Get everyone you know to vote. I don’t care who they vote for, just get them out and voting. Help correct the narrative. Get your friends to read your blog. Be accurate, honest, and fair and most importantly, help educate your readers on the issues of the day.

George W. Bush is our failure. Let’s not let something like that happen again.