NY Times' Frank Rich Sunday: Lying like it's 2003



RAW STORY

Published: Saturday January 20, 2007 Print This Email This "Those who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but who could imagine we'd already be in danger of replaying that rotten year 2003?" writes New York Times columnist Frank Rich for Sunday editions. Excerpts follow. # Scooter Libby, the mastermind behind the White House's bogus scenarios for ginning up the war in Iraq, is back at Washington's center stage, proudly defending the indefensible in a perjury trial. Ahmad Chalabi, the peddler of flawed prewar intelligence hyped by Libby, is back in clover in Baghdad, where he purports to lead the government's Shiite-Baathist reconciliation efforts in between visits to his pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Last but never least is Libby's former boss and Chalabi's former patron, Dick Cheney, who is back on Sunday-morning television floating fictions about Iraq and accusing administration critics of aiding al-Qaida. When the vice president went on a tear like this in 2003, hawking Iraq's nonexistent WMD and nonexistent connections to Mohamed Atta, he set the stage for a war that now kills Iraqi civilians in rising numbers (34,000-plus last year) that are heading into the genocidal realms of Saddam. Cheney's latest sales pitch is for a new plan for "victory" promising an even bigger bloodbath. Cheney was honest, at least, when he said that the White House's Iraq policy would remain "full speed ahead!" no matter what happened on Nov. 7. Now it is our patriotic duty -- politicians, the press and the public alike -- to apply the brakes. Our failure to check the administration when it rushed into Iraq in 2003 will look even more shameful to history if we roll over again for a reboot in 2007. For all the belated Washington scrutiny of the war since the election, and for all the heralded (if so far symbolic) congressional efforts to challenge it, too much lip service is still being paid to the deceptive PR strategies used by the administration to sell its reckless policies. This time we must do what too few did the first time: call the White House on its lies. Lies should not be confused with euphemisms like "incompetence" and "denial." # TIMES SELECT SUBSCRIBERS CAN READ FULL COLUMN HERE



