Ari's Frustration of the Day

President Bush opened his speech today by drawing the historical comparison between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Later he cited Vietnam and talked about “the great lessons of history”. The great lessons of history? How about the fact that you can’t win a guerilla war?

Watching the president relentlessly trying to convince us that things are actually going well in Iraq, it’s clear that the only history lesson he’s taken to heart is that if you say something often enough -- repeat the Big Lie often enough -- it will eventually become accepted as the truth.

Joseph Goebbels, the dark master of propaganda, described his work as “the art of simplification, constant recapitulation, appealing to the instinctive and the emotional and simply ignoring unpleasant facts.” Is this one of "the great lessons of history" the President and his men have learned so well?