A further thought

If you happened to read my last post, you may have noticed Mr. Herbert's dancing around the issue, the ridicule, derision, & dismissals of anyone with an opposing point of view, the misquoting, the context trimming, the bald-face assertions of opinion as common-knowledge on things that it turns out are highly questionable....

And stop and think that these are the people who wrote articles daily for 8 years saying that Bush "stole" the 2000 election, that he was illegitimate, that he was a idiot, that he was an evil genius, that he "lied" about Iraq having WMD, that he authorized a "torture regime", that he didn't care about black people, that his federal response to Katrina was not proper, that his anti-Kyoto stance caused Katrina, that Cheney "outed" Valarie Plame through Scooter Libby. Every day. New York Times. Washington Post. Los Angeles Times. CNN. MSNBC. Every day.

We had a highly disrespectful television show called "That's My Bush". We had a fantasy movie Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore that cleverly edited Bush's words to project what the Left wanted to believe about him, but couldn't find actual, in context words to do it because it wasn't even remotely true. And you had fans of the movie talking about it as if it were fact. Then there was Oliver Stone's "W" fictionally portraying the left's vision of the man. What other president has had this done to them especially while still in office? Anything close? All of this fiction posing as documentaries, or the flat, shameless derision in "That's My Bush". And what really got under their skin is that Bush didn't respond to any of it. Which doesn't fit the narrative of King George, Fascist Dictator and Squelcher of Dissent. And thus they saw his modesty as arrogance, and his decisiveness as rashness.

But if you do a little research, you find that every Florida recount, even by the New York Times ... put Bush on top. Constitution says he wins. Bush believed what every major intelligence agency in the world told him and what Saddam Hussein wanted the Arab world to believe. Clinton CIA appointee George Tenet told him the case was a "Slam Dunk". You find out the CIA waterboarded exactly three highly involved terrorists after double-checking legal issues and trying other less aggressive avenues. You find out that it was Richard Armitage leaked Plame's role in sending her husband to Niger and he didn't even really realize it at the time, and that Wilson did find evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellow-cake from Niger and it was in his report. And that Scooter Libby went to jail to satisfy the blood thirst of a bitter and vindictive Democratic witch hunt for contradicting himself on a timeline on when he said what to whom many months earlier in a non-crime that was dismissed by the courts. You find out that the Democratic governor of Louisiana refused the initial offer for federal aid for Katrina. And that there is no consensus on Global Warming, and that the countries that signed Kyoto aren't even following it.

But if you repeat it often enough, it "becomes" true. And when 80% of the people in the media belong to the political opposition and they feel cheated (2000 election) and their motivation for getting in to Journalism is to "make a difference" rather than to report the facts ...

You can start to see that perhaps America has a distorted view of the 8 years of the Bush presidency.

And it's not due to the alleged Republican control of Fox News.

And so Obama has quietly re-established the military tribunals he called an "enormous failure". He's come face to face with the fact that perhaps there really is no better place than Gitmo for the fellows at Gitmo (though they'll find another place all the same). Gitmo will remain open indefinitely, until such a time as we feel it is safe to close it - which was the Bush administration's position as well.

It turns out Pelosi and others knew about the waterboarding and only howled when it became politically advantageous. Feigning innocent ignorance. So apparently it wasn't as big a deep, dark secret as she and others made it out to be.

We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, withdrawing troops when they are no longer needed. And apparently that evil practice of rendition implemented by Bush Bill Clinton is OK (again) ... now. Plus no habeus corpus for POWs at Bagram in Afghanistan -- which is different from Gitmo ... how? (I think maybe the beds aren't as nice in Bagram) We still have the Patriot Act. The CIA can still wiretap. But now that we are under The One, it's just all for our protection, not a Facist powergrab by BushHilter CheneyHalliburton.

A tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.

Glenn Beck recounted an interview with George W. Bush back around the time of the election. Bush assured him, (paraphrased) Don't worry about Obama. When he gets here, he will see that his choices are very limited. Looks like George was right about that.