Karl Rove's Shameless, Remorseless, Soulless Attempt to Rewrite History

I went on Countdown last night to talk about what Keith Olbermann called Karl Rove's "attack on history."

During an interview with Charlie Rose, the erstwhile Boy Genius pulled out his bucket of whitewash and audaciously claimed that "one of the untold stories" about the war in Iraq is that the Bush administration had been "opposed' to Congress holding the vote authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq just a few weeks prior to the 2002 elections because "we thought it made it too political."

Too political? For Karl Rove? That's like saying something was too bloody for Count Dracula.

He went on to paint a picture of a White House pushed into war, and laid the blame for much of what has happened since on a Congress that had "made things move too fast." If not for Congress, you see, there would have been more time for weapons inspections, and to build a broader coalition.

It was a satiric tour de force worthy of Jonathan Swift or Stephen Colbert -- but Rove wasn't joking. He actually expected us to buy his load of b.s. Watching Rove, two things were perfectly clear: his disdain for the truth and his contempt for the American people know no bounds.

Rove's appearance was the work of a shameless, remorseless, soulless political animal taking the first steps on what will no doubt be a high profile and lucrative march toward historical revisionism. He knows that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the fanatics responsible for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history -- not exactly the best thing to put on your post-government resume -- so he is hell-bent on replacing reality with the latest incarnation of The Big Lie.

A student of history, Rove is obviously also up on his Orwell: "Who controls the past, controls the future."

Unfortunately for Rove, this isn't 1984; we now live in the Age of Google, and YouTube, and Lexis-Nexis searches. So the refutation of his lies is just a click away.

The evidence that it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- and not Congress -- who were hungry for war is overwhelming. For starters, we have Bush's own words before the vote, when he explicitly told Congress that "it's in our national interest" to get the vote "done as quickly as possible." And the insistence of then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that "delaying a vote in Congress would send the wrong message." And the words of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle who says that when he asked Bush in September 2002 why there was such a rush for a vote on Iraq the president "looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.'"

And there is the insider evidence provided by Richard Clarke, who wrote that within hours of the 9/11 attacks, this administration had its heart set on heading into Iraq. And from Paul O'Neill, who made it clear that invading Iraq had been Bush's goal before he had even learned where the Oval Office supply closet was.

Even now, with his approval ratings scraping the bottom of the historical barrel, Bush still dominates the Congressional agenda on the war. And Rove wants us to buy that back in the heady days of 2002, when the president was still riding a wave of support forged by 9/11, his desire for caution and reasoned action were overridden by a war hungry Congress? "We don't determine when the Congress votes on things," Rove told Rose. "The Congress does." I guess he and Bush landed on the whole "I'm the Decider" thing later (maybe after they orchestrated that triumphal landing on the Abraham Lincoln).

The truth is that the zealots in the White House were not about to allow their desires to invade Iraq -- which had been laid out years earlier by the Project for a New American Century -- be quashed by anything as piddling as the facts or the evidence or reasoned debate or Congress. Especially a Congress populated with Democratic leaders so rattled and timid that to call them spineless would be an insult to invertebrates everywhere.

Indeed, it was the perfect political environment for an administration intent on shoving a war down the throats of Congress and the American people.

Let's remember, this was the time when the administration had pulled together the White House Study Group (which included Rove himself) with the express mission of marketing the war. These people weren't in the mood to wait, they were in the mood to sell, sell, sell. The Downing Street Memo showed that by July of 2002 they were already fixing the intel to sell the war. By August 2002 the White House was already using Judy Miller and the New York Times as prime advertising space. And by September 2002, Condi Rice was already warning of smoking guns turning out to be mushroom clouds, and Cheney was using aluminum tubes to make the case that Saddam was "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."

So the record is irrefutable: the drumbeat of war coming from the White House couldn't have been louder. And no amount of 5-years-down the road spinning by Karl Rove is going to change that truth.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[animalhamilton]

Arianna,
Please keep this blog on your site for forever.

[Johnbo]

Arianna, you point out many specific facts that refute this comically audacious claim. But, you and everyone else miss probably the best one - the Karl Rove statement back in early 2002 when he was addressing a group of Republicans somewhere and promised to "ram the war down the throats" of the Democrats in the Fall - or something like that. (Maybe some one here remembers the exact quote and who Rove was addressing.)

The claim that they wanted to avoid the vote because an election was approaching is beyond incredulous. The whole POINT was to defeat the Democrats by forcing them to either stand with the president or look like cowards. . . and it worked. Many of the Dems are still trying to explain away their votes. And the irony is that they lost that election ANYWAY. Wow, don't you hate it when that happens???

[observer]

In a Rudolf Guilani Presidency I say let's have Karl Rove as Secretary of State, Bernie Kerik as Secretary of Defense and Scooter Libby as National Security Adviser. All that deviousness should not be lost as we try to survive in a devious world.

[hermesacat]

Some other posters made an excellent point, worth underlining:
Rove, transparently asserted falsely that Congress, not the W.H., rushed into the Iraq war too quickly.
In (wrongly) blaming and faulting Congress for this, Rove is ADMITTING that the fast track rush to war was a mistake!

As Arianna illustrates, it's easy to demonstrate that it was in fact the W.H. that demanded the ASAP rush to war.
As well, former W.H. chief of staff Andrew Card refutes Rove, and implies Rove in fact KNOWS it's the W.H. that's to blame, not Congress.

So Rove, by suggesting the fast track stampede to war was a mistake, only ends up, in a weird way, criticizing and incriminating the Bush White House, including himself, on the issue!

As Card says: "sometimes his brain gets ahead of his mouth. And sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his brain."
No kidding. Karl's way past his time. Shouldn't he to be out to pasture by now? If he had any sense, he'd volunteer to retire quietly to Texas, and fade into obscurity.

[Bocababs]

Saw Andy on Scarborough this morning. When the people you worked with think you speak before you think.....Saw you on K.O. the other night. Great interview.

[hermesacat]

This example of Rove's shameless propagandizing and rewriting of history, says Newsweek made a major error in hiring him as a columnist.

If Newsweek's idea of a conservative voice to add "balance" to their mag., is a dishonest partisan propaganda meister like Rove, who's nearly as shameless as Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels was, I say Newsweek has some out of touch decision makers.

[Lansair]

Adolph Hitler had Doctor Joesph Goebbels,George Bush has his Karl Rove. Both were masterful spin doctors and political liars. In Hitler's time they were called propagadist,today we call them Spin doctors. Both are polite names for professional liars. Rewriting History under Stalin and for years after the communist rewrote History to suit themselves. The only difference Karl Rove was in Washington,not Moscow,or Berlin.

[MikePatronSaintofTruth]

Mr. Rove seems to be slipping in his capacity to spin. His apparent desire to lie about the race-to-war in Iraq and to pin it on the Democrats is a transparent acknowledgment of the failure of the war. In other words, why would Karl Rove (of all people) suggest that the Democrats pushed Bush into war if the Iraq war was such a success?!
There are three things that are transparent from Rove's quotes on the Charlie Rose show:
Rove's lie is transparent (the lie that Dems pushed Bush into war); the desperation is apparent (to try to deflect blame about the Holocaust in Iraq from Bush and Rove himself); and the failure of Bush's war in Iraq is transparent (if Rove really thought Bush's war in Iraq was a success, he surely wouldn't give Democrats the credit for it!).

[MikePatronSaintofTruth]

Karl Rove is simply a despicable person. He is indecent. As the wizard of lies... he is truly the Andre Gide's immoralist. This man is profoundly unAmerican as he exalts himself in those things that most Americans abhor: Dishonesty, Deceit, Manipulation, chicanery, etc. He prides himself on being a nasty Machiavelli. What a sad person. So ugly on the inside!
However, Mr. Rove seems to be slipping in his capacity to spin. His apparent desire to lie about the race-to-war in Iraq and to pin it on the Democrats is a transparent acknowledgment of the failure of the war. In other words, why would Karl Rove (of all people) suggest that the Democrats pushed Bush into war if the Iraq war was such a success?!
There are three things that are transparent from Rove's quotes on the Charlie Rose show:
Rove's lie is transparent (the lie that Dems pushed Bush into war); the desperation is apparent (to try to deflect blame about the Holocaust in Iraq from Bush and Rove himself); and the failure of Bush's war in Iraq is transparent (if Rove really thought Bush's war in Iraq was a success, he surely wouldn't give Democrats the credit for it!).

[bberkow]

But doesn't anyone recall Bush saying "I decide when we go to war."?

Of course that was utterly humiliating to Congress, to whom the Constitution assigns exclusively the power to declare war -- but how does Rove reconcile Bush's proud, Constituti­on-decimat­ing assertion with Rove's own current set of lies?

[bigfated]

Karl Rove is a piece of shit. Nothing more need be said!

[enuffofw]

As I see it, the facts are unimportant. Just as the "media" in the heady days of Nazi Germany, the Neo-con media will "report" these lies as facts. Not a single challenge to this revisionism will rise high enough to be seen on the average American's radar screen.

They truly are evil...We are doomed.

[Tankan]

It wasn't George, it was the one armed man!

[julia06]

Rove is obviously a sociopath just like Bush.
1 out of 25 are.

See The Sociopath Next Door, very imformative.
http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/0767915828/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196411430&sr=1-1

[Wombat]

I see the makings of a new theologicl tennant of right-wingnutism. The Bush administration was sabotaged by the Democrats. They sabotaged Social Security reform, they sabotaged Medicare reform, they sabotaged relief efforts after Katrina, they sabotaged the Iraq war by first rushing us into it and then by denying the funding to win it, and finally, they sabotaged the middle East peace talks ( the talks will, of course, fail) Then the charge of "Worst President" will cause wingers to see red and go apeshit muther fucking nuts and dedicated their lives to payback by plotting the destruction of a Democratic president the way they supposedly ruined the bush presidency. The next generation will be consumed with the politics of revenge on the evil Democrats for the sbotage of the Bush predidency.