If you ever have read George Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, (and if you haven't you should) you know that the Minitruth, Newspeak for the Ministry of Truth, was a branch of the totalitarian government of Oceania, who was responsible for revising history and making history fit into the ideology of Big Brother.

Now that the Bush Administration has become a relic of history, former high-level Bush Administration officials, such two former Press Secretaries and Karl Rove, have sought out to engage in a little revision of the past eight years themselves. Since the inauguration they have been making appearances on the usual television shows retelling the Bush years, under the guise of attempting to get the "story straight", but in reality contradicting with the established facts in an effort to deceive the American people (again).

The height of this absurdity was during Hardball with Chris Matthews, when former Press Secretary Ari Fleisher went into a spectacular tangent that defied logic. Going beyond just the standard talking points, that we have come to expect, but going so far as to argue that the current President should be thankful for what President Bush left him.

And then came the creme de la creme, when Fleisher repeated the now infamous Bush talking point, "we have not been attacked since 9/11." The absurdity of that statement is beyond reason, because it suggests that President Bush effectively took over the Oval Office on September 12th, 2001, and the country ran (rather smoothly) without a President for nine months. This statement, which has been repeated throughout the conservative media, absolves President Bush of any responsibility as it relates to foreign policy and defending the United States from enemies foreign and domestic. It holds someone else accountable for the attacks on September 11th. Shocking, though not surprisingly, some pundits have gone so far as to blame President Clinton for not killing Bin Laden during his eight years in office, even though President Bush essentially sat on his thumbs for nine months before he decided to trample on the Constitution.

Chris Matthews though, clearly shocked and bewildered, like many of us I am sure, did not let Fleisher get away with his lapse of reason being passed off as "setting the record straight". He did what journalist were supposed to do and followed up with Fleisher, and from there the discussed spiraled into chaos.

Arianna Huffington forewarned about this attempt by former Bush officials to retell the past eight years weeks ago, when many of us where obsessed with Rush Limbaugh and his shenanigans (see here); and Fleisher got caught when Matthews realized what was going on and now the rest of us are hopefully awake to what is going on now.

With new reports coming to surface that the former President turned the United States into a dictatorship during the years after the terrorist attacks and when he left office forever in January; through the legal maneuvering of officials like John Yoo, legislation such as the Patriot Act, and instilling a sense of a fear from the ambiguous enemy simply referred to collectively as "terrorists", and the use of Orwellian diction like "Homeland Security" and "Freedom Fries" (See Victory Gin); it is crucial that we do not allow a calm demeanor to fool us.  

President Bush said he believes that history would judge him, and absolve him of his crimes, both constitutional and ethical, it is our responsibility to make sure that we do not let his cronies do the writing.

This post first appeared at Clips 'N Chips