"In The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (September, Penguin Press), a scathing rebuke of the current administration’s definition of “truth,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich examines the propaganda misinformation of the Bush era.
Though it was a sequence of events that led to Rich’s frustration, he notes the war in Iraq as the epitome of all of the administration’s shortcomings: “Placing a higher priority on partisan politics than the nation’s welfare, lazy and poor planning, public relations as a substitute for policy, arrogance, unilateralism, an inability to admit or correct mistakes: the same themes recur again and again,” he says.
Rich does, however, reserve a measure of respect for the method behind the madness, while shunning the insanity itself. Beyond the White House’s policy, he says, “is also a fascinating narrative: the fictional story they rolled out, quite brilliantly at times, that sold the nation on a war against an enemy that did not attack us on 9/11.” The Democrats’ “tardy, timid and laughably inarticulate” response has perturbed him, but not nearly as much as the actions of the Republican administration: “The White House . . . sold a war of choice to the American people on fictitious grounds and with disastrous results that will continue to play out on many fronts for years to come,” he says."
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He pretty much nails it. I look forward to reading it. |
