Fact & Fiction

We Knew at the Time the War Began that Iraq Did Not Possess WMD

by Jude Wanniski

In watching the Sunday talk shows last week I was astonished at how everyone -- interviewers and guests -- seems to have forgotten that in the last month before President Bush pulled the trigger on Iraq it was clear we all should have known Saddam had NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. I'm posting below a memo I ran in this space 30 days before the war began entitled,"Finally, A Disarmed Iraq." When everyone who supports the war continues to say that EVERYONE believed Saddam had WMD, including t

Jefferson Still Survives

by Andrew Burstein

This article was first published on HNN in March 2002. Too good to be true? On July 4, 1826, the very day on which America celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. While this fact - dramatic enough - is beyond dispute, the ninety-year-old Adams's last words as they have come down to us,"Jefferson survives," seem a bit too perfectly constructed. Yet no historian ever questioned them. 11I framed my book America's Jubilee (

The Myth About the Signers of the Declaration of Independence that Won't Die

by Kelley Duddleson

This article was first published in July 2002.On July 4th, 2002, the Pentagon published an Independence day message from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard B. Myers. In this message General Myers urged Americans to remember that the United States is at war with an enemy that "threatens the principles and values that

Inside the American Gulag

by Tom Engelhardt

For his dystopia, 1984, his classic novel of totalitarianism, George Orwell created"Room 101," an interrogation room where a prisoner's deepest fears were to be realized and applied. Tier 1 in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, as the now-infamous photos indicate, was the Bush administration's Room 101 for the"Arab mind," and so the crown jewel of its global interrogation facilities; just as Guantanamo was the" crown jewel" of the prison camps in its global Bermuda Triangle of injustice; just a

According to Bush World War II Began with the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Say What?

by Georgina M. Taylor

I have been following the debates in the HNN newsletter, in the American and Canadian media, and among Canadian citizens about President Bush, the war in Iraq, and the Second World War with great interest. On June the 3rd, 2004 the Globe and Mail reported that in a televised commencement speech to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Bush said that " 'like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless attack on the United States,' ... in an app

Why Richard Nixon Deserves to Be Remembered Along with "Brown"

by Joseph J. Sabia

In recent weeks Americans gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, which overturned the “separate, but equal” doctrine and ordered the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed.” However, many Southern schools dragged their feet on integration, with districts steadfastly refusing to obey the court order. When federal bureaucrats tried to intervene to force desegregation, tensions grew. Summing up the situation, Senator Richard Russell, D-GA, stated in 1970, “The people of (the South) are more worked up over this problem than anything I’ve seen in all my years in politics.” Enter Richard Nixon: racial healer.In the fall of 1968, 68 percent of black children in the South were attending all-black schools. By 1974, that number had fallen to 8 percent. This extraordinary accomplishment was achieved through the shrewd political skills and raw courage of President Nixon, Secretary of Labor George Schultz, and Attorney General John Mitchell.In his book With Nixon, speechwriter Ray Price outlined Nixon’s school desegregation goals:

The Difference Between Hollywood's Troy and Homer's

by Thomas Palaima

'Do you know what a man is? Is not / birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, / learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, / and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?" -- Shakespeare,"Troilus and Cressida" "But Hippolochus / Bore me, and I am proud he is my father./ He sent me to Troy with strict instructions / To be the best ever, better than all the rest, / And not bring shame on the race of my fathers." Homer -- Iliad 6.211-215, Lombardo translatio

Did Vietnam Anti-War Protests Embolden Our Enemies?

by Jeffrey Kimball

Like the larger Tet Offensive of 1968 in Vietnam, the uprising of Sunnis and Shiites that began in April 2004 in Iraq has heightened Americans' anxieties about the prospects for success in the war and given rise to renewed criticism of the administration's leadership. Even though defenders of the war and the administration have rejected others' attempts to draw analogies between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War, they have drawn an analogy of their own. Iraq War suppor

The Seven Biggest Myths of St. Patrick's Day

by Edward T. O’Donnell

St. Patrick wasn't even Irish.

Greenspan's Social Security Scam

by Dean Baker

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday called on Congress to restrain the growth of the federal budget deficit by adopting budget controls that would apply to new taxes as well as new spending. ... Greenspan offered several ways to curtail federal spending growth, including reducing Social Security and Medicare benefits. The Fed chairman again recommended raising the age at which retirees become eligible, to keep pace with the population's rising longevity. And he r

Column: Why Bush Is Now an Embarrassment Even to the Right

by P.M. Carpenter

Tony Blankley appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" the other night, looking a bit ashen. As a panel member discussing the president's grave and gathering problems, the former Newt Gingrich evangelist and current Reverend Moon spokesman volunteered that even Republican support for George W is beginning to slip. This is bad, in his view. I'd like to relate Mr. Blankley's complete personal take on W's falling numbers, but, it being "Hardball," Chris Mouthews was there to interrupt and

Why the Cynics Are Wrong About Presidential Commissions

by David Flitner, Jr.

President Bush's decision to aquiesce in the appointment of a commission to investigate the apparent failures of intelligence which was used in the argument for war with Iraq raises questions of the most sober import and urgency. First among these, in the minds of many, will be with regard to the choice of the ad hoc advisory commission as the most appropriate vehicle for such an inquiry. In fact, few instruments of government are more precisely suited to such an undertaking. The as

Nixon and Kissinger Obfuscations About Vietnam: What the Documents Show

by Jeffrey Kimball

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger's accounts of the Vietnam War were self-serving, incomplete, and obfuscatory. 

A Secret Roosevelt

by Edward J. Renehan Jr.

On a recent walking tour, I found myself having to correct our guide after he indicated that Arlington Cemetery's hallowed ground contains no members of the Roosevelt family. In fact it does contain at least one furtive Roosevelt. The gentleman in question is soldier, war-correspondent, author and editor Granville Roland Fortescue (1875 — 1952). At the time of his birth, Fortescue's mother — an Irish maid by the name of Marion “Minnie” O'Shea — was mistress to Theodore Roosevelt's uncl

Was Ike's Nomination as President Really a Shoo-in?

by Bahman Elmer Zahraie

In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, political columnist Elizabeth Drew, writing about the difficulties facing retired General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, points out that he is no Eisenhower: "When Eisenhower decided to run as a Republican in 1952, both parties had been seeking him out, and he was handed the nomination by Republican Party leaders."Although General Eisenhower's imme

Is John Keegan Sloppy?

by Geoff Pietsch

John Keegan's Fields of Battle:The Wars for North America is engagingly written but is replete with a shocking number of seemingly inexplicable errors, coming, as it does, from such an eminent historian. These are not garden variety typos and minutiae but major errors of fact which would embarrass an undergraduate. For example:(all page refere

Did Franklin Really Fake the Kite Experiment?

by Michael Brian Schiffer

Was Benjamin Franklin's account of a kite flight a scientific fraud? Yes, says Tom Tucker, author of Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and his Electric Kite Hoax ( Parsecs, 2003). Tucker's cynical thesis, however, is not shared by other Franklin scholars, including his scientific biographer, the late I. Bernard Cohen. In disputing the received view, Tucker fashioned a creative case against Franklin that is far from convincing.The major support for his thesis rests on a flimsy argument by analogy. In Franklin's literary efforts, in the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanac, he revealed a wily sense of humor that extended at times to merging fact and fiction. Thus, the argument runs, if Franklin and the truth were easily parted in one literary realm (popular culture), then they must in others as well (natural philosophy). By this illogic we would conclude that some of the twentieth century's greatest physicists were also scientific hoaxers.

If Iraq Is the Philippines, Iraqis Should Be Wary

by Stephen R. Shalom

Addressing a joint session of the Philippine Congress President Bush said to skeptical critics of his Iraq policy, "Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia."(1) Much in Bush's speech was utter nonsense -- such as his claim that th

Was It Illegal for President Bush to Leak Classified Secrets to Bob Woodward?

by HNN Staff

In a recent article in the Nation, Eric Alterman stated flatly that President Bush had broken the law when he personally leaked classified secrets to Bob Woodward after 9-11. Alterman wrote:In his most recent book, Bush at War, Bob Woodward brags that he was given access to the deeply classified minutes of National Security Council meetings. He also noted, not long ago,

Was JFK Behind the Assassination of Diem?

by David Kaiser, Thomas Schwartz, Eric Bergerud

Last week the Weekly Standard published an article claiming that newly-released tapes from the LBJ presidential library included "a bombshell" ... "Johnson himself believed what Richard Nixon always suspected: that the Kennedy White House did not merely tolerate or encourage the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem, but organized and executed it."HNN asked historians on H-Diplo to respond to th