Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.
First some ancient history: In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration was preoccupied with ramming its Iraq war resolution through Congress. It wasn’t that they needed the resolution to go to war. Not hardly.
What the Bush team wanted was to get the Congress on the record about the war before the midterm elections that November — in particular the resolution was intended to cause a rift between bloodthirsty voters back home and antiwar Democrats in the House. They also hoped to use votes for the resolution by Democratic senators who might run against Bush in 2004, including Sens. Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, and Lieberman, to name a few, as a wedge issue to separate them from their liberal base.
The war resolution was part of a “marketing campaign,” as Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, referred to it, that had been put together by the Iraq Study Group, an elite corps inside the West Wing that included, among others, Karl Rove.
Last Wednesday, a mere five years after helping ram the war resolution through Congress, Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and rewrote history as brazenly as it has ever been done:
CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Why?
ROVE: This administration was opposed to it. I’m going to talk about that in my book.
ROSE: Well, tell me.
ROVE: No.
ROSE: Come on, give me something.
ROVE: No.
ROSE: Give me something.
ROVE: I just did. I told you the administration was opposed to voting on it in the Fall of 2002.
ROSE: Because?
ROVE: Because, we didn’t think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up in a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of it. It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad.
This may not be the biggest lie Rove has ever told but it certainly the easiest to disprove. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of contemporaneous news accounts of the White House pressuring Congress to pass the war resolution in the fall of 2002.
But, as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, there’s a source that disproves Rove that even he would have trouble discrediting: The White House website at whitehouse.gov.
A quick search produces a transcript for a briefing by Bush on Sept. 24, 2002, which someone on Bush’s staff titled:
“President Urges Congress to Pass Iraq Resolution Promptly.”
…and this little piggy rove went weeeee all the way home.
Um, check the date of your citation. Yes, after the resolution was already before congress Bush urged its passage. DUH! But this hardly disproves what Rove is claiming. I mean, maybe Rove is wrong (honestly or not) but you haven’t done anything to convince the reader of that.
In fact I recall the Spring and Summer of ’02 pretty well, and the way I remember it is at the very least consistent with Rove’s claim: All that time the Bush admin wanted to delay debate on Iraq until after the election.
It was Democrats in congress who repeatedly insisted that they wanted a debate now, before the election, and insisted that congress had to authorize the use of force.
The Bush administration gave in to these demands after months of ceaseless hectoring. Then, of course, Democrats immediately switched to complaining about getting what they asked for. Which isn’t the last time that would happen. (Nor, alas, is such schizophrenic behavior rare in politics on either side.)
That lil pimple on the ass’s world is disqualified.
Stultis
What an apt name for yet another coming out of the Virginia shill mill! It won’t do any good to remind you to read the Rules For Commenting, but you could at least try not making up whoppers to rival Rove’s.
Since when is anything too political in the Bushie Rovian world?
for being a lying theiving piece of puss!!!!!!!!!
I think there’s only one billo fan in the family that would disagree, out of 9.
Jon,
Yep some would say:
(Just a Bradblogger). But others seem to know celebs better, and so, some defer to them.
But 6 of 7 of us do not because we are the blog and resistance is futile.
6 or 7 of us are still at it…
shw
The DEMS pushed the start of the war up? Sure, KKKKarl, they were the minority in Congress, but the Dems shoved the war down the Republicans front. He must really think that the US citizenry have no memory, or are stupid, or both. Hence, Stultis.
Stultis,
You didn’t offer any sources or citations for your assertion that the Dems tried to speed up passage of Bush’s war resolution before Sept. 2002 — because there aren’t any. The resolution was dreamed up by Rove and the Iraq Study Group and sent to Congress where it was rammed through by constant hectoring by Bush and his cabal. It was passed in the House on Oct. 10 and by the Senate the next day.
I find this so puzzling. Conservatives will have the rest of us believe they are always right on the issues — and yet they also feel they must lie to win arguments. If the truth is on your side, that ought to be enough.
Just waving hello to the other 6 or 7 still here…
re: Rove – He reminds me of a small child who, standing there with chocolate smeared on his face and clothes and an empty wrapper at his feet, still defiantly denies that he ate the candy bar.
He’s a loyal Bushie to the end – he’ll go to his grave denying that he OR Bush ever did anything wrong.
And, in just a couple of years, he’ll be blaming it all on the Clintons.
I think this latest line of Rovisionism is to make Rove’s legacy look plausbile and only by coincidence does it give the Mighty Wurlitzer something to spin and spew. Rove is out to make himself credible again after a disasterous 2006. This is about him, not Bush. This is about re-legitimizing himself as an political strategist. This is Nixonian-like effort at rehabilitation. And it is utterly pathetic, even for Rove.
One’s got to wonder what his offshore account looks like!
Maybe daddy will keep em for a pet pig on the Paraguay farm.
Stultis:
ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS????????????????????????
BIH ~ henry hyde ~ 83 Yrs too many ~ (Burn In Hell)
Maybe Stultis *is* Rove? Who else would think that garbage is true? Yeah right! The DEMOCRATS forced this awful war on the poor Bush administration. Sheesh. There’s a bridge here in Coronado, CA that is priced at a real steal! Email me if you are interested.
I wonder if it is this is the same “Stultis.” Check out the “links” page…
— Adolph Hitler, from Mein Kampf
Sheer implausibility is not necessarily a defect when lying, as history has clearly shown. And Rove, a modern day Goebbels, has a long track record as a practitioner of the big lie technique.
Mister rove You Are A Stool With Eyes . . .
How dare you compare Mr Hankey with Rove! What an insult to talking Christman Poos everywhere.
Rove is built from bullshit – it defines his existence, and his worth to those he works for.
Everything out of his mouth is posture-first, truth a distant second, if there at all.
His apologists notwithstanding, he’s a criminal who will never do his time.
Small wonder Gore Vidal and Pat Buchanan (on as extreme-opposite-ends-of-the-political-spectrum as you can find) both are saying that the U.S.A. is “decomposing”.
People like Karl Rove-and-company being in positions of influence put me in no mood to argue with Vidal and Buchanan.