Author: Jonathan Schwarz

Dennis Kucinich says:

KUCINICH: We need to have hearings on Iraq again. We need to go over again why we went there. We need to review the statements and all the errors that were made, and from that we bring the country together to take a new direction. It’s all fact-based. And then we start to heal our nation. But we cannot heal America if we continue with policies that are based on lies. We’ll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened. So America needs a new approach of truth and reconciliation. This isn’t a Democratic or Republican matter. This is a matter that relates to the conscience of this country. This is a matter of the heart—the heart of democracy itself. This is a matter of whether we’re going to a sober reflection about the events that have transpired since 9/11, with respect to Iraq. And until we do this, we will be trapped not only physically in Iraq, we’ll be trapped emotionally and spiritually in Iraq. We may never get out of Iraq if we don’t tell the truth.

Read it all.

There is about to be a big fight within the Democratic party about this. Some, like Kucinich, really do want to drag the whole hideous nightmare of how we got into Iraq out into the light. Others either want to let the coverup stand, or don’t understand why it matters. What we should be doing now is generating as much pressure as possible to help those like Kucinich.

Why? From the least abstract reasons to the most:

1. As Kucinich says, the only hope we have for a less-bad outcome in Iraq is if the people responsible are held accountable for their lies.
2. If these people are allowed to continue lying and control the national narrative, the hopes for any further progressive change in America will be dead.
3. If these people aren’t held accountable now, they will be back in 2013 with a scheme to invade the underwater kingdom of Atlantis.
4. The truth is a good thing.

Let’s go.

There’s one thing we know about Doug “Fucking Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth” Feith: he’s not afraid to make stark moral judgments.

For instance, here’s Feith in a 2002 speech:

However much the language of morality elicits sniffs from some of our sophisticated critics abroad and at home, we don’t flinch from using it. Moral clarity is a strategic asset.

Here’s a bit of his 2003 article “Strategy and the Idea of Freedom”:

President Reagan’s talk of democracy and good-versus-evil and his exhortation to tear down the Berlin Wall were widely criticized, even ridiculed, as unsophisticated and de-stabilizing. But it’s now widely understood as having contributed importantly to the greatest victory in world history…

God, I can’t wait until he finds out about this new Washington Post op-ed, with its moral relativism and mealy-mouthed equivocation! I bet he’s going to EXCORIATE it!

Rumsfeld is a bundle of paradoxes, like a fascinating character in a work of epic literature. And as my high school teachers drummed into my head, the best literature reveals that humans are complex. They are not the all-good or all-bad, all-brilliant or all-dumb figures that inhabit trashy novels and news stories. Fine literature teaches us the difference between appearance and reality.

— “The Donald Rumsfeld I Know,” by Douglas J. Feith

ALSO: I wonder if by giving this piece the title “The Donald Rumsfeld I Know,” headline writers at the Post were having a little fun with Feith.

Nice work, Adam Nagourney and the New York Times:

On the Friday before Election Day, Mr. Cheney told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that the White House would push “full speed ahead” with its Iraq policy, no matter the outcome of the election. In the process, Mr. Cheney obscured a last minute flurry in which the president had attacked Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for a remark about American troops in Iraq.

It’s safe to say I’m not the world’s biggest John Kerry fan. Still, I’ve always dreamed that someday the New York Times could write a story that mentions Kerry without regurgitating the most pernicious, disgusting right wing smears about him.

Maybe I need some new dreams.

(Thanks to Dean Baker for pointing this out.)

Let’s remember this section from Bob Woodward’s book State of Denial:

[Andrew] Card kept pushing, at one point raising the possibility of change at the Pentagon with Vice President Cheney.

No, Cheney said, he was predisposed to recommend that the president keep Rumsfeld right where he was. Card was not surprised.

In private conversations with Bush, Cheney said Rumsfeld’s departure, no matter how it might be spun, would be seen only as an expression of doubt and hesitation on the war. It would give the war critics great heart and momentum, he confided to an aide, and soon they would be after him and then the president. He virtually insisted that Rumsfeld stay.

Michael Ledeen, prominent conservative “expert” on terrorism, is perhaps the craziest person in America who’s not institutionalized. For instance, here’s a new claim of his in National Review:

I do not feel “remorseful,” since I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated—as I still do—support for political revolution in Iran as the logical and necessary first step in the war against the terror masters.

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn Ledeen’s lying.