Frank Rich tackles the Rove Axis of Revised History:
"...Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. RoveÕs book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldnÕt wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.

But the old regimeÕs attack squads are relentless and shameless. The Obama administration, which put the brakes on any new investigations into Bush-Cheney national security malfeasance upon taking office, will sooner or later have to strike back. Once the Bush-Cheney failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran again come home to roost, as they undoubtedly and explosively will, someone will have to remind our amnesia-prone nation who really enabled AmericaÕs enemies in the run-up to 9/11 and in its aftermath.

ThereÕs a good reason why RoveÕs memoir is titled ÒCourage and Consequence,Ó not ÒTruth or Consequences.Ó Its spin is so uninhibited that even ÒBrownie, youÕre doing a heck of a job!Ó is repackaged with an alibi. The bookÕs apolitical asides are as untrustworthy as its major events. For all RoveÕs self-proclaimed expertise as a student of history, he writes that eight American presidents assumed office Òas a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor.Ó (HeÕs off by only three.) After a peculiar early narrative detour to combat reports of his late adoptive fatherÕs homosexuality, Rove burnishes his family values cred with repeated references to his own happy heterosexual domesticity. This, too, is a smoke screen: Readers learned months before the book was published that his marriage ended in divorce.

RoveÕs overall thesis on the misbegotten birth of the Iraq war is a stretch even by his standards. ÒWould the Iraq war have occurred without W.M.D.?Ó he writes. ÒI doubt it.Ó He claims that Bush would have looked for other ways Òto constrainÓ Saddam Hussein had the intelligence not revealed IraqÕs Òunique threatÓ to AmericaÕs security. Even if you buy RoveÕs predictable (and easily refuted) claims that the White House neither hyped, manipulated nor cherry-picked the intelligence, his portrait of Bush as an apostle of containment is absurd. And morally offensive in light of the carnage that followed. As Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin PowellÕs former chief of staff, said on MSNBC, itÕs Ònot a very comforting thingÓ to tell the families of the American fallen Òthat if the intelligence community in the United States, on which we spend about $60 billion a year, hadnÕt made this colossal failure, we probably wouldnÕt have gone to war.Ó

Rove and his book are yesterday. Keep America Safe is on the march. Liz CheneyÕs crackpot hit squad achieved instant notoriety with its viral video demanding the names of Obama Justice Department officials who had served as pro bono defense lawyers for Guant‡namo Bay detainees. The video branded these government lawyers as Òthe Al Qaeda SevenÓ and juxtaposed their supposed un-American activities with a photo of Osama bin Laden. As if to underline the McCarthyism implicit in this smear campaign, the Cheney ally Marc Thiessen (one of the two former Bush speechwriters now serving as Washington Post columnists) started spreading these charges on television with a giggly, repressed hysteria uncannily reminiscent of the snide Joe McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn.

This McCarthyism has not advanced nearly so far as the original brand. Among those who have called out Keep America Safe for its indecent impugning of honorable AmericansÕ patriotism are Kenneth Starr, Lindsey Graham and former Bush administration lawyers in the conservative Federalist Society. When even the relentless pursuer of Monicagate is moved to call a right-wing jihad Òout of bounds,Ó as Starr did in this case, thatÕs a fairly good indicator that itÕs way off in crazyland.

This is hardly the only recent example of RepublicansÕ distancing themselves from the Cheney mob. The new conservative populist insurgency regards the Bush administration as a skunk at its Tea Parties and has no use for its costly foreign adventures. One principal Tea Party forum, the Freedom Works Web site presided over by Dick Armey, doesnÕt even mention national security in a voluminous manifesto on Òkey issuesÓ as far-flung as Internet taxes and asbestos lawsuit reform. Ron Paul won the straw poll at last monthÕs Conservative Political Action Conference after giving a speech calling the Bush doctrine of Òpreventive warÓ a euphemism for ÒaggressiveÓ and ÒunconstitutionalÓ war. PaulÕs son, Rand, who has said he would not have voted for the Iraq invasion, is leading the polls in KentuckyÕs G.O.P. Senate primary and has been endorsed by Sarah Palin.

In this spectrum, the Keep America Safe crowd is a fringe. But it still must be challenged. As weÕve learned the hard way, little fictions, whether about Òdeath panelsÓ or Òuranium from Africa,Ó can grow mighty fast in the 24/7 media echo chamber. Liz CheneyÕs unsupportable charges are not quarantined in the Murdoch empire. Her chummy off-camera relationship with a trio of network news stars, reported last week by Joe Hagan in New York magazine, helps explain her rise in the so-called mainstream media. For that matter, Thiessen was challenged more thoroughly in an interview by Jon Stewart on ÒThe Daily ShowÓ on Tuesday than he has been by any representative of non-fake television news...."

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Making claims that the nation was not attacked during Bush's watch is like saying Mussolini was a farmer and Stalin raised orchids...



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