History revised while we watch

Posted on August 19, 2003 by Ampersand

Adam at The Likely Story has a pretty entertaining story. As I’m sure everyone remembers, back on May first President Bush made a speech on some boat or other, announcing that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” The White House printed the text of this speech on the White House website, under the caption “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”

Today, the President revised his view. From the Washington Post:

In an interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service given on Thursday and released by the White House yesterday, Bush interrupted the questioner when asked about his announcement on May 1 of, as the journalist put it, “the end of combat operations.”

“Actually, major military operations,” Bush replied. “Because we still have combat operations going on.” Bush added: “It’s a different kind of combat mission, but, nevertheless, it’s combat, just ask the kids that are over there killing and being shot at.”

What’s really fun about this, though, is that the White House is busy revising its website. Remember that speech which, on the White House website, used the title “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended”? Well, it now reads (emphasis added by me) “”President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” And that’s not all – according to Adam, “The White House web team is systematically going through their archive of the USS Abraham Lincoln speech and inserting ‘major’ in every document. I don’t know which is funnier, their inept attempt to play historical revisionists OR the fact that we’re watching this (unbeknownst to them) in real time as they do it.”

Fortunately, Adam and others have been taking screenshots documenting this pathetic display. Check it out..

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One Response to History revised while we watch

  1. G Newman says:
    August 20, 2003 at 4:04 pm

    Winston Smith, where are you now that we need you? Imagine going back and changing THE ARCHIVE!

    This is positively Stalinesque, not simply Orwellian.

    But what can we expect from an Administration that has applied its own version of Lysenko to the abortion debate, with suppressing of information on NIH web sites?

    Lysenko was the discredited Soviet geneticist whose silly pseudo-science became the loyalty test that all other life science research was measured against. Your research had to back Lysenkoism or it was suppressed, and you might end up in the gulag.

    Now the Bush crowd has applied this ethos to the archive of his speeches as well…

    Someone should tell these clowns that “1984” was a novel, not a how-to manual.

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