Hello, Pot, This Is Bush. You Are Black!
Jun. 16th, 2003 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistRevisionist Hissyfitstory
ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) - President Bush countered those questioning his justification for the invasion of Iraq on Monday, dismissing "revisionist historians" and saying Washington acted to counter a persistent threat.
"Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," Bush said in a speech to New Jersey business leaders.
Referring to the ousted Iraqi president, Bush said, "Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted."...
Bush said, "This is for certain, Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."...
"This government will use whatever technologies and skill is necessary to secure America by hunting down those who would harm us one person at a time."
it's especially insane because this is an instance of meta-revisionist history. like, bush is projecting the accusation of revisionist history as a part of his own campaign of revisionist history. "revisionist history" is no longer a commentary on the discourse from an "objective" narrative place positioned outisde the discourse (like the critical analysis of the text of 1984). now those two words, produced in a context where they cannot be divorced from caveats, accoutraments, metonymic references to Orwell, power abuse, and perversion of history-as-truth (the project of it, if not the sustained result), are conscripted for the use/aid of the same crime it once named. it has been stolen.
(of note: the first song on Radiohead's new album, "Hail To The Thief" is called "2 + 2 = 5": "... "try to sing along / but the music's all wrong" )
here is a corollary breakdown from MoveOn.org
Namely:
On March 17th, in the eve of the Iraq war, President Bush told the American people that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said simply, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elaborated: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Now, after two months of searching by the most skilled teams in the military, not a single piece of solid evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs in Iraq has been found. The top 87 sites identified by U.S. Central Command have turned up only vacuum cleaners, a swimming pool for Iraq's Olympic team, and a license plate factory.
Officials in the CIA and other intelligence agencies have complained for months that they have been under pressure to "cook the books" on Iraq intelligence. Worse, a number of the key pieces of evidence that the Bush administration has released have come unraveled:
* The President's State of the Union claim that Iraq possessed an active nuclear program was based on fraudulent documents that included the forged signature of an official that weren't even in office at the time.
* The dossier that Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell relied upon in critical presentations turned out to have been partially plagiarized from a graduate student's paper from 12 years ago.
* The claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, first made by Prime Minister Tony Blair, now appears to have been fabricated.
* The administration's claim that two tractor trailer trucks found in Iraq housed "mobile weapons labs" has now been disputed by numerous experts inside and outside of the military. An official British investigation has concluded that the trailer trucks were "exactly what the Iraqis said they were -- facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."
Proactive tip: go to the MoveOn link above to ask the Congress to establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the distortion of evidence w/r/t the war. Hopefully it will snowball. Kucinich introduced a bill demanding an inquiry last week; more and more Dems are calling for the same thing. Manufacturing evidence is isomorphic with manufacturing consent, and if their cred is undermined, they won't be able to throw the same mist when it comes to Iran and Syria. The subtext of "we are oil-hungry, bloodsucking troglodytes" will have to become text, and Norman Rockwell was never very good at painting hyenas with blood on their mouths and dead flesh stuck between their teeth. And if it won't sell on wall calendars, maybe, just maybe, it will be less of a zombie virus, and more of a Meme, Interrupted.
ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) - President Bush countered those questioning his justification for the invasion of Iraq on Monday, dismissing "revisionist historians" and saying Washington acted to counter a persistent threat.
"Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," Bush said in a speech to New Jersey business leaders.
Referring to the ousted Iraqi president, Bush said, "Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in '91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world, so the United States and friends and allies acted."...
Bush said, "This is for certain, Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies."...
"This government will use whatever technologies and skill is necessary to secure America by hunting down those who would harm us one person at a time."
it's especially insane because this is an instance of meta-revisionist history. like, bush is projecting the accusation of revisionist history as a part of his own campaign of revisionist history. "revisionist history" is no longer a commentary on the discourse from an "objective" narrative place positioned outisde the discourse (like the critical analysis of the text of 1984). now those two words, produced in a context where they cannot be divorced from caveats, accoutraments, metonymic references to Orwell, power abuse, and perversion of history-as-truth (the project of it, if not the sustained result), are conscripted for the use/aid of the same crime it once named. it has been stolen.
(of note: the first song on Radiohead's new album, "Hail To The Thief" is called "2 + 2 = 5": "... "try to sing along / but the music's all wrong" )
here is a corollary breakdown from MoveOn.org
Namely:
On March 17th, in the eve of the Iraq war, President Bush told the American people that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said simply, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld elaborated: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Now, after two months of searching by the most skilled teams in the military, not a single piece of solid evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs in Iraq has been found. The top 87 sites identified by U.S. Central Command have turned up only vacuum cleaners, a swimming pool for Iraq's Olympic team, and a license plate factory.
Officials in the CIA and other intelligence agencies have complained for months that they have been under pressure to "cook the books" on Iraq intelligence. Worse, a number of the key pieces of evidence that the Bush administration has released have come unraveled:
* The President's State of the Union claim that Iraq possessed an active nuclear program was based on fraudulent documents that included the forged signature of an official that weren't even in office at the time.
* The dossier that Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell relied upon in critical presentations turned out to have been partially plagiarized from a graduate student's paper from 12 years ago.
* The claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, first made by Prime Minister Tony Blair, now appears to have been fabricated.
* The administration's claim that two tractor trailer trucks found in Iraq housed "mobile weapons labs" has now been disputed by numerous experts inside and outside of the military. An official British investigation has concluded that the trailer trucks were "exactly what the Iraqis said they were -- facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."
Proactive tip: go to the MoveOn link above to ask the Congress to establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the distortion of evidence w/r/t the war. Hopefully it will snowball. Kucinich introduced a bill demanding an inquiry last week; more and more Dems are calling for the same thing. Manufacturing evidence is isomorphic with manufacturing consent, and if their cred is undermined, they won't be able to throw the same mist when it comes to Iran and Syria. The subtext of "we are oil-hungry, bloodsucking troglodytes" will have to become text, and Norman Rockwell was never very good at painting hyenas with blood on their mouths and dead flesh stuck between their teeth. And if it won't sell on wall calendars, maybe, just maybe, it will be less of a zombie virus, and more of a Meme, Interrupted.
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wmd
Date: 2003-06-16 08:33 pm (UTC)seltix
Re: wmd
Date: 2003-06-17 12:05 pm (UTC)Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where 99 red hydrogen balloons of mass destruction go by.
the most recent Onion had a funny thing about that, similar to what you wrote above--Colin Powell's claims that have proved unsubstantiated--one was (I am paraphrasing, but this is the gist) "Iraqis possess lots of sand which was to be used to make into glass for windshields of planes that are going to drop nukes on Washington, Baltimore and NYC"
another one was that Saddam had already launched WMDs against the US, but missed.
Re: wmd
Date: 2003-06-17 03:43 pm (UTC)seltix
oh, and we should probably invade cuba just in case they got those wmds that saddam missed us with. can't be too safe.
Re: wmd
Date: 2003-06-17 04:13 pm (UTC)Re: wmd
Date: 2003-06-17 08:32 pm (UTC)seltix