-By Warner Todd Huston
James Kirchick, assistant editor of The New Republic, has come under my scrutiny for his bias before, of course. I see one of my roles as keeping an eye on the bias in the media and to document and analyze that bias. But while I naturally focus on when the media get it wrong, I also like to point out when those who I’ve criticized get it right. Here is a case when a member of the media that I usually criticize did, indeed, get it right and this time it might get him in Dutch with his lefty pals in the nutroots. After all, the surest way to get the nutroots upset at you is to say Bush did not lie about the war. But that is exactly what Kirchick just did and he did an admirable job chronicling it, too.
In an editorial in the L.A. Times on the 16th, Kirchick said that “Bush never lied to us about Iraq” and then went on to substantiate his claim in a style that runs contrary to the Media and nutroots meme that “Bush lied and people died.”
Kirchick started his piece with a recounting of the flip flop that Mitt Romney’s father, George, undertook when he reversed his support of the Vietnam war as he geared up to run for president in 1968. Romney initially supported the Vietnam War but later claimed that the administration and war supporters “brainwashed” him into believing in the war. With his flip flop he claimed that he had seen the light, but critics said that he was merely playing to a perceived anti-war changing tide and trying to capture that vote — in other words, Romney’s flip flop was only calculated to get votes. This, Kirchick says, is the same thing that politicians like John F. Kerry have done with the Iraq war. They voted for it before they voted against it.
Continue reading “A Lefty That Says ‘Bush never lied to us about Iraq’”