Historical revisionism and other forms of denial

Senator James Inhofenhofe (a Republican of course) blames the media not only for getting it wrong on WMD, but for having the bizarre idea that WMD was the reason for the Iraq invasion.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on Friday:

Inhofe, speaking to the press before Cheney’s arrival, lambasted Democrats for Thursday’s Senate vote to begin withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1 and the press for “mischaracterizing” the reasons for U.S. involvement.

“The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up,” Inhofe said. [”¦]

Pressed for an explanation, Inhofe said weapons of mass destruction were “incidental” to the decision to invade Iraq.

“The media made that the issue because they knew Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in August 2002:

Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction — I believe including nuclear. There’s not one person on this panel who would tell you unequivocally that he doesn’t have the missile means now, or is nearly getting the missile means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. And I for one am not willing to wait for that to happen.

Similarly, right wing hack Hugh Hewitt dismisses the reality of the civil war in Iraq as liberal spin.

An exceprt from his interview with Michael Isikoff.

HH: …And Michael Isikoff, what do you see, if the Democrats have their way, what do you see happening there in five years?

MI: I mean, look. If any of us could foresee the future, and knew what Iraq was going to look like down the road, we’d be better off than anybody else in Washington.

HH: But we have to guess, right? We always have to guess.

MI: We have to guess. We have to guess. I mean, we know that a lot of bad guesses were made by this administration in the invasion.

HH: Again, that’s spin.

MI: No, no, no, no, no, no. We know that.

HH: Give me a specific.

MI: They did not”¦a specific?

HH: Of a bad guess.

MI: Did they anticipate the sectarian warfare that was going to take place?

HH: No. Okay”¦

MI: Did they tell the country that there’s a high risk that we’re going to be enmeshed in a civil war in Iraq, in which thousands of Americans”¦

HH: Civil war is itself a spin, though.

MI: Well, what do you call it?

HH: That is a characterization”¦I call it an insurrection, I call it an al Qaeda surge, I call it bad militias in Baghdad.

MI: Well”¦

HH: But a civil war, where you’ve got Sunni and Shia”¦actually, the one thing Petraeus has also said”¦

MI: Fighting each other. Fighting each other. That’s”¦

HH: There are lots of definitions. It’s spin.

Hewitt’s also convinced the surge is working. Any suggestion to the contrary is just spin.

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