White House Alters Webpages About Iraq Combat

How's this for revisionist history?

When the White House published the text of and photos from Bush's speech announcing the supposed end of the Iraq attack, the headline read: "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." But on Tuesday, 19 Aug 2003, the Cursor website noticed that the headline had been changed to read: "President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." The word "major" had been added.

Apparently, with the quagmire resulting in at least one dead US soldier a day--not to mention even more injuries, dead Iraqis, and sabotage--that headline had proved incorrect. Therefore, straight out of 1984, the headline was stealthily altered to make it seem as if that's what it had always said.

The latest addition to the Bush League Blogroll, the Memory Hole (website - blog) does a great job of living up to its slogan--"rescuing knowledge, freeing information." It's a remarkable compendium of such attempts to rewrite, recast, or simply erase history. It also offers plenty of reference material, including the Congressional report on 9/11 and a compilation of little-publicized quotes of various high-ranking government officials saying that 9/11 could have been prevented--for example: "I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it" (Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA).