I don’t usually do this, but once in a while, it’s just necessary.
This post, from Blogs for Bush’s Mark Noonan, has had me shaking my head all day. I just had to share it.
It is said — endlessly — on the left that “Bush Lied, People Died!!!!”. Of course, those of us who live in the real world understand that in President Bush we have a nearly uniquely honest President – so honest that it has cost him dear in terms of political power and support. The common refrain of how we just need an honest man in the White House has been answered – and never, I think, has a man been more slandered than President Bush; honesty is hated in large areas of the world. The relentless campaign of lies and half-truths directed against President Bush has taken its toll….
We live in an Orwellian world where, indeed, things are doubleplus unacceptable, but no one is actually bad, except for Republican officials.
Our saving grace is that this world — this universe, really — was designed for truth to come out. The lies are thick and strong these days, but the truth remains just as a rock, temporarily submerged by a tidal wave…the wave will recede [sic], and the rock will still be there.
Bush is honest to a fault; he’s unpopular because of his commitment to veracity; White House critics are dishonest; and the political world is Orwellian.
The post, just to be clear, is entirely sincere. The writer isn’t kidding or trying to write satire; he means it.
Oh, and what inspired the BfB post? This gem from National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson:
After reviewing the latest critique of the CIA’s failures to foresee the pre-9/11 dangers of radical Islam, and while reading the final sordid details surrounding the Pvt. Beauchamp fables published at The New Republic, and viewing the latest phony wire-photos from Iraq (the poor victimized Iraqi woman holding unfired cartridges as ‘proof’ of coalition bullets that hit her home), I was wondering who will monitor our self-righteous monitors?
The answer, like it or not, in the post-Plame, post-Scheuer, post-Tenet era is that no one believes much what the CIA says any more about the Middle East; no one believes that a wire-photo from there is genuine or its caption accurate; and no one necessarily believes anything in once respected magazines, whether the Periscope section of Newsweek or anything published in The New Republic. The common gripe is that the administration lied to the public about WMD in Iraq; but what is lost is that once revered institutions proved disingenuous in their accusations and unreliable in their performance.
I’m not entirely clear on Hanson’s point — I think it has something to do with the strength of the administration’s credibility — but I thought I’d add that he doesn’t appear to be kidding, either.
If you’re not reading conservative sites, this is what you’re missing.