It's been three years since Ari Fleischer was pulling this same number on Hardball and playing the "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine as John called it at the time. The more things change, the more they stay the same. --Ari Fleischer's Propaganda Iraq War Ad:
The propaganda that is hitting our airwaves over the Iraq war with creatures like Ari is sickening. This warmonger brought up WWII and the tired and wrong "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine (Barbara mentioned this mind set in her C&L post) in his defense of this. Ari is so 2007---and we're all just Dirty F*&king Hippies stuck in a 2001-2002 mind frame. [...]
This link to Germany and Japan is despicable, but neocons have no shame. Iraq was not part of the World Trade Center attacks and Ari knows it, but they need a propaganda link, so---there you go. Ari doesn't even know the wounded soldier's name in his own ad. There is no hole deep enough for these people and not even Hell should welcome them...If you don't think this has been coordinated with the WH, well...I know you do. Ari's group is called Freedom Watch.
As Media Matters reported, Ari Fleischer wasn't the only one of these Bushies out there helping to spread the propaganda today. He had some help from Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley and others as well.
Media turn to discredited Bush officials to respond to Obama's Iraq speech:
Following President Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, media outlets hosted discredited Bush administration officials Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Ari Fleischer to respond, despite the fact that the three were at the forefront of the campaign of misinformation used to sell the war.
Lots more there so go read the rest. They forgot to mention Dan Senor who was about as infuriating as this hack Fleischer was on Morning Joe. Hardball also had Senor on and CNN's Anderson Cooper had Fleischer on as well. I'll have more on that soon since Paul Begala gave Fleischer a tongue lashing on CNN.
Transcript below the fold.
GEIST: Ari, the president seemed to indicate last night this really is a turning of the page. In other words, if Iraq blows up a year from now, two years from now, we are not going back and do anything about it. Is that realistic?
FLEISCHER: Well see. You know I think that there are two looming deadlines that President Obama has set that have profound implications. One is we're going to begin the withdrawal from Afghanistan, "condition based" in July of 2011 and the second is that we will be out of iraq entirely all 50,000 which includes 5,000 Special Forces, the tough guys who go into hot spots, who are the offense groups.
We left them behind, 5,000 of them, just in case. That's scheduled for December 2011. If either place blows up, Barack Obama will face very difficult decisions just as George Bush did with the surge. What does he do? Does america still leave?
Do we leave behind a worse Iraq in case the government is not able to hold it together? We have so much at stake in both Iraq and Afghanistan and I keep coming back to when you look at America in the 20th century. It's one of the reasons there was a lasting peace in Europe and a lasting peace in Asia is because of American influence and because the American people were willing to let our influence last, especially though the deployment of military forces that stayed for decades in Japan and South Korea.
One last point. Osama bin Laden gave an interview in 1998 to ABC News in which he he said, on the air that America is weak because America is not able to see through long wars. America does not want to ever stay in Somalia and we will outlast America. This is being tested. We'll find out what will happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a great struggle of what the American people are prepared to accept and not prepared to accept.
BARNICLE: At the end of the president's speech last night, the last five or six minutes is the cost of this one, not just the physical costs that I eluded to but the economic cost given the crunch in the economy today here.
FLEISCHER: I need to make a point about that and what you said earlier, because pobably the most profound meeting I ever sat in on at the White House was a meeting with Elie Weisel. Just President Bush, Elie Wiesel, Condi Rice was there and myself. And the president asked Elie Wiesel - Nobel Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor - should he remove Saddam.
Wiesel said yes, and then he added, "If only the world had listened to Winston Churchill in 1938 or 1939, World War II and the Holocaust could have been avoided. And I thought to myself, if the world had listened to Churchill in '38, people probably would've said "you exaggerated the threat of Hitler. You know, who says there was a World War coming?" We'll never know what we averted by getting rid of Saddam and how many lives were saved as a result of removing the threat of Saddam Hussein.
ENGEL: Saddam wasn't planning a holocaust.
FLEISCHER: I never said holocaust.
ENGEL: Just now you're making the same comparison that Osama bin laden is tied to Iraq. Osama bin Laden wasn't tied to Iraq. You just talked about how Osama bin Laden, we have to keep fighting in Iraq and stay the course in Iraq.
FLEISCHER: No, I'm not saying it was tied to Iraq The point I was making about both Afghanistan and Iraq is the American will to stay for long periods of time. That's what's being tested. I didn't say he was tied to Iraq.
ENGEL: Why should be it tested in a war where you said was based on false intelligence? Why should be, you know we're going to let Osama bin Laden win if we don't stay for a long time in Iraq (crosstalk) if we went there for bad intelligence reasons?
FLEISCHER: But the question is if things go bad in Iraq will we withdraw the 50,000 remaining troops and my point was that's a future decision President Obama will have to make just as a withdrawal from Afghanistan future decision. If the conditions are terrible in both places and we withdraw and they become even worse it's a fundamental decision President Obama will have to make.
That's the point I'm making about America’s will to stay or to leave.
ENGEL: I'm saying this whole association that is still out there in many people's minds that Iraq was somehow associated with 9/11.
FLEISCHER: No. You're scratching my point. I didn't say that and you're stretching my point.
ENGEL: All right. It's what I heard.
FLEISCHER: It's not what everybody else heard.
