"Don't Know Much About History..."

It seems that about half of the political blogs link to Paul Krugman's column. So I usually try to avoid redundancy and don't link to him. But I do read him regularly. And I'll make an exception this time, because he's right on the mark about the latest turn in the ongoing WMD propaganda - which is turning into a farce: Get Me Rewrite! New York Times 02/06/04. He says that the US is "going through an Orwellian moment." And he explains:

Let's start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade. ...

Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.

And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.

And, he says, if Bush gets his wish and creates a whitewash committee to cover up his team's blatant cooking of the WMD intelligence, "there will be further rewriting to come." For instance, he points out that Bush and his defenders are now saying that that Saddam refused to allow inspectors to return to Iraq just prior to the war, which is just factually not the case.

Confused? Just turn on Fox News and repeat what you hear. Don't think about it much. That just gives people headaches.