Lies about Iraq

Peter Wehner has an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal (via Instapundit) in which he ably debunks some of the antiwar myths (and even outright lies) which the MSM loves to perpetuate:

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them.

Do read the whole thing. A few months ago Commentary (pdf; see here for an html version) also published an indispensable and lucid editorial by Norman Podhoretz on the lengths which some people will go to, to dishonestly represent recent history. Independently of whether the war was right or wrong (and I'm absolutely convinced it was right, in case you hadn't noticed) more energy needs to be expended in eradicating these despicable attempts to rewrite history.