What's the best possible spin to put on this Orwellian rewrite?

November 12, 2003 12:43 PM

Reasons Not to Invade Iraq, by George Bush Sr.

Only available at the Memory Hole, since Time Magazine's website seems to have, erm, lost it.
posted by dash_slot- (11 comments total)

oh, crap! Memory Hole went down, too! Soon we'll all be
posted by hackly_fracture at 12:49 PM on November 12, 2003

ok. the essay in question is from 2 March 1998, bush sr is writing about gulf war one. dub wasn't even president yet. presented the way it is, it's a troll.
posted by quonsar at 12:51 PM on November 12, 2003

It seems like Time is now aware of the growing controversy. The Memory Hole says that the original link gives a 404 error, but it actually gives the following explanation:

"The page you've requested is an excerpt from a book by Brent Scowcroft and George H. W. Bush titled A World Transformed, which appeared in the March 2, 1998, issue of TIME magazine under the title "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam". It has been removed from our site because the publisher did not grant us rights to sell the piece online through the TIME archive. "

Of course, this doesn't explain why it was removed from the table of contents, nor the timing of the deletion.
posted by Mbarron2896 at 12:55 PM on November 12, 2003

Reasons not to invade Iraq?

Barely.

It's an article explaining why they didn't push the invasion of Iraq further.

Please, I can't stand Bush or the right or the war either, but, this kind of wanton bullshit-shovelling by the left isn't gonna win anything... elections, friends, even debates...
posted by jon_kill at 1:02 PM on November 12, 2003

lllI have always been suspicious about a book written by someone who uses the pages to "explain" actions or lack of actions. In fact, as I recall, from my own memory though I disliked Bush and was always justifying his not invading Iraq because he was given a mandate and got full support from a number of nations to free Kuwait from the invading armies of Iraq. A part of that arrangment and agreement was that military actions against Iraq would stop once Iraq's armies had been chased out of Kuwait. Though with hindsight it would perhaps have been nice had our military continued into Iraq, we were not given that mission nor were our allies expecting anything other than freeing Kuwait.
posted by Postroad at 1:04 PM on November 12, 2003

double post

owillis found the article first

I doubt that the fact Time apparently removed it from their website is reason enough to post it again as a FPP; maybe as a comment in one of the 10,000 recent Iraq threads it would stand, but not as a FPP imo
posted by matteo at 1:16 PM on November 12, 2003

Due to the fact that it's a book excerpt, I can understand that Time's website would not carry it in the long run. Removing materials because of copyright issues isn't Orwellian. If the book had been removed from all shelves or suddenly taken out of print, that might be worth reporting.

Magazine websites don't tend to mirror the paper version. Some sites will offer an index of all articles available in that issue, while others will only post a selection of articles and leave out all mention of what you get in the paper version. I would guess that Time falls in this second category, and the index was pulled with the article accordingly.

That said, Bush, Sr.'s points are relevant. He mentions that the US was in Iraq in the early 1990s due to a UN mandate following Iraq's attack on Kuwait. They fulfilled this mandate, and a further invasion would have exceeded their mission. Contrast this to an invasion of Iraq that was opposed by the UN that did exactly what Bush, Sr. warns -- the US is currently "..an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Other nations are now wary, and Saddam has been difficult to locate.
posted by mikeh at 1:20 PM on November 12, 2003

Not at all quonsar. Anyone who follows the links - as I would expect them to - would immediately see this: " On 21 September 2002, The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn't have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush's key points apply to both."

That is not in any way misleading, is it, either by TMH or me? (which of us, btw, is a troll? I don't recall the last time I was called a name....)

On preview: a double post that doesnt show on a Google metafilter search? oh my!

There are currently some issues with the search results, which are being worked out now. Ri-i-i-ght.

Kill it Matt.
posted by dash_slot- at 1:25 PM on November 12, 2003

Quite a huge difference between "Reasons not to invade Iraq", implying a speculative future, and "Why we didn't remove Saddam", directly expressing historical reasoning. That is what I call misleading and most definitely trollish.
posted by mischief at 1:47 PM on November 12, 2003

Yeah, blame on the search, dash_slot. Ri-i-i-ght. You probably just duped it on purpose in the hopes it'd go unnoticed.
posted by angry modem at 1:49 PM on November 12, 2003

There's an article floating around by a former Time staff writer, quoting Time's editorial staff, that gets to the bottom of this story. Since the essay did end up in a book, Time was only allowed to keep it online for a limited time, due to a contract agreement with the publisher. So no big conspiracy here, just a stupid contract.
posted by mathowie at 2:07 PM on November 12, 2003