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The opening of the Bush Lie Bury

Norman Swanson, writing on CounterPunch, nails it on the head in one!

"On April 25th the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and General Rehabilitation Project will be dedicated in Dallas, Texas.  It takes up 23 acres at Southern Methodist University, 23 acres that neither humanity nor any other species may ever reclaim for anything decent or good.

I’ll be there, joining in the people’s response with those who fear that this library will amount to a Lie Bury.

“The Bush Center’s surrounding native Texas landscape,” the center’s PR office says, “including trees from the Bush family’s Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, continues President and Mrs. Bush’s longstanding commitment to land and water conservation and energy efficiency.”

Does it, now?  Is that what you recall?  Bush the environmentalist?

Well, maybe you and I remember things differently, but do we have a major educational institution that will effectively repeat our corrections of the Lie Bury’s claims for decades to come?

According to the Lie Bury, Bush was and is an education leader, saving our schools by turning them into test-taking factories and getting unqualified military officers to run them.  This is something to be proud of, we’re told.

The Lie Bury’s annual report shows Bush with the Dalai Lama.  No blood is anywhere to be seen.  The Lie Bury’s website has a photo of a smiling George W. golfing for war.  “The Warrior Open,” it explains, “is a competitive 36-hole golf tournament that takes place over two days every fall in the Dallas area.  The event honors U.S. service members wounded in the global war on terror.”

Now, I actually know of some soldiers wounded in what they call by that name who don’t feel honored by Bush’s golfing, just as millions of Iraqis living as refugees within or outside of the nation he destroyed find Bush’s liberty to walk outdoors, much less golf for the glory of war, offensive.  But none of them has a quarter-billion dollar “center” from which to spread the gospel of history as it actually happened — as it happened to its losers, to those water-boarded, shot in the face, or otherwise liberated by Bush and his subordinates.


When Bush lied about excuses to start a war on Iraq — as with everything else he did — he did so incompetently.  As a result, a majority of Americans in the most recent polls, still say he lied to start the war.  But few grasp the lesson as it should be applied to wars launched by more competent liars.  And memory of Bush’s lies is fading, buried under forgetfulness, avoidance, misdirection, revisionism, a mythical “surge” success, and a radically inaccurate understanding of what our government did to Iraq."

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