This column by The Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is remarkable. Democrats since 2003 have been charging George Bush with being a liar about our reasons for going into Iraq, and chief among his accusers has been Senator Jay Rockefeller whose Select Committee on Intelligence has released a report which Rockefeller tries unsuccessfully to spin as lending support to the Bush lied meme. Hiatt suggests, however, that the reader will scour the report's pages in vain searching for substantiation of the charge.
In other words, the WaPo, no friend of the Bush administration, concludes that there's no evidence that George Bush had any reason to believe anything about Iraq and Saddam Hussein than what he told us in the run-up to the war. Well, now. Will those who were so quick to defame and mock the President be called to account by the media for their own malicious mendacity and, in Rockefeller's case, brazen hypocrisy? Will their names be highlighted for future historians to scorn for their contemptuous behavior?Will the Bush Lied, People Died allegation go down in history as a slogan conjured by some of the most unsavory participants in the political debate?
We're not betting on it.
Our culture has debased itself to the point where one can say any defamatory thing one wishes about a political opponent and, if he's on the right side of the media zeitgeist (which is actually the left side), he can do so with impunity. It is nice, though, to see the WaPo take a few honest steps against the tide.
RLC