Fake History and Real History

It irritates me to no end that my local library stocks history according to Bill O'Reilly. I saw a woman picking one up to check out recently and had to bite holes in my tongue. So, you have made up history.

Bill O'Reilly has taken to styling himself as something of an expert on historical murders. This has not been an easy process. For example, his book on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was so flawed thatthe museum bookstore at Ford's Theater refused to sell it. His book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy contained self-aggrandizing fabulism of how O'Reilly, hot on the trail of the killers, arrived atthe home of George de Mohrenschildt just as that old friend of Lee Harvey Oswald killed himself. And, as for Killing Jesus, let's just say O'Reilly's gifts for scripture history are on a par with his gifts for romantic small talk. As I said, it's hard out there for a hard-boiled historian. But in his latest, Killing Reagan—which obviously didn't happen, but go with it—O'Reilly inadvertently (and without proper attribution, as we shall see) stumbled into that shadowland that lies between the history that we believe, and the history that we'd rather not know.

Why not? His network makes up the news. Then there's real history. I hadn't seen any of this and am grateful to Charles Pierce for enlightenment.

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War. The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started. It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

It's incredible how much damage those two empty suits were able to inflict on the world. The banality of evil, indeed. 

Former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: ‘The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet. ‘He was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it. And in return for what? 'For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn’t even believe it themselves’.

I'd settle for seeing Blair at the Hague. It would be a start anyway.