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. 

Bernie the Warhawk?

This is a post concerning Funiciello that's why the Lookingglasland post title.

Outside of foreign policy (where his voting record says "warhawk" and where I am clearly an "Only Congress Shall Declare War" kind of guy), Bernie and I are in MUCH agreement.

I'll try to at least give some of it a listen. Personally, I think he's still just pissed because Bernie wouldn't come and campaign with him and because Sanders dissed Ralph Nader by not returning Ralph's calls. Here's the warhawk on going to war in Iraq. 

There is more danger of an attack on the United States if we launch a precipitous invasion.

Much more at the link.

I've Got Good Deals and Bad Deals For You

First, the bad deal, though it's not so described.

“I’ll tell you, taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal,” the former Florida governor told a crowd of roughly 200 people who attended a forum on national security at St. Ambrose College.

And here's a bit of bad news to go with the bad deal. One of the major war criminals from George W.s administration is back, and he's giving advice to Jeb!

Things got worse in his speech Friday, where he volunteered that “Paul Wolfowitz is giving some advice.” Wolfowitz, the scowling face of the smug neocons.

This Paul Wolfowitz. 

It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

Yep, hard to imagine. 

Here's the good deal. Though once again, not so described. It must be backassward day.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is unabashed about his opposition to President Obama’s foreign policy, especially when it comes to Cuba. 

Fuck it. It's the weekend and no one wants to hear anymore from Marco Rubio. Let's hear what a realist has to say. Take it, Mr. President.

“We don’t want to be imprisoned by the past,” Obama said about Cuba during a visit to Kingston, Jamaica, in April. “When something doesn’t work for 50 years, you don’t just keep on doing it. You try something new.”

And during an April interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, the president expressed a belief that America is powerful enough to risk modifying the foreign policy status quo.

“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk. And that’s the thing ... people don’t seem to understand,” the president said.

“You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies.

Despite Rubio wanting to give the sanctions another 50 years to work, I like Obama's logic. It's Cuba. It's hardly a threat to us and never has been and, really, we can adjust the policies.