August 19, 2003

More Bush Revisionism

[NOTE 10/28/03 - 7:30pm: If you are here via a story about the White House's robots.txt file, first, Welcome!! and secondly, I've just posted an update to that story on the main page. 2600 Magazine has spoken to a White House spokesperson about the change.]

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank notes that Bush is once again trying to revise history.

In an interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service given on Thursday and released by the White House yesterday, Bush interrupted the questioner when asked about his announcement on May 1 of, as the journalist put it, "the end of combat operations."

"Actually, major military operations," Bush replied. "Because we still have combat operations going on." Bush added: "It's a different kind of combat mission, but, nevertheless, it's combat, just ask the kids that are over there killing and being shot at."

In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." The headline on the White House site above Bush's May 1 speech is "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended."

Want proof? Screenshot 1 shows the National Security page at http://www.whitehouse.gov/response. Highlighted down at the bottom, you'll see a link to an article titled "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended" which links to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html (I've also highlighted the URL for the link in the status bar of my browser that shows up because my mouse is hovering over the link, so you can verify that this is really where the link goes.)

Screenshot 2 shows the Popdex page for the http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html URL, and shows it having the title "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended".

Screenshot 3 is of the actual page you find at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html. Note that the word "major" has been added to the title.

Adam at "The Likely Story" has some additional screenshots showing just how many articles related to the USS Abraham Lincoln trip and announcement that now have "Major" in the title AND were most recently updated on August 18th.

And in case there was any doubt that the White House did, in fact, use the "Combat Operations" title as opposed to the "Major Combat Operations" title, here's Screenshot 4, of article from the White House website that apparently hasn't been updated yet. Might be fun to check back in a day or two, eh?

Sadly, this isn't the first time this week the Bushites have engaged in such historical revisionism. A couple days ago, I posted about how their rationale for having the Republican Convention so close to the September 11th commemerations has apparently changed from taking advantage of the commemeration (as stated in April) to "only" trying to avoid a conflict with the 2004 Summer Olympics (as stated in May).

By the way, since it's miserably hot (105 degress as I write this) and, as a result, I'm feeling rather grumpy, let me just say that I love how Bush says to ask our "kids that are over there killing and being shot at" whether its "combat" or not. Now, granted, it would be a logistical impossiblity to ask our kids that have been killed about it since, not to put to fine a point on it, dead people can't exactly speak, but does anyone really think the phrasing was actually predicated on the logistical issue? I mean, that would involve nuancing, right, and we all know it's not Bush's job to nuance, right? Besides, how often does someone say "you want to know if XYZ is dangerous? Ask so-and-so!" even though so-and-so is actually dead? Its a very common rhetorical tactic to emphasize just how bad a situation is - you know, ask the dead guy, he'd tell you if he wasn't dead. No, I think Bush just didn't want to have to actually admit, yet again, that our kids are being killed. As he put it back in December, he may be the "...one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids on the death of their loved ones," but near as I can tell, he doesn't give much thought to the casualty count beyond that. If he does, he could sure do a better job communicating that!

Posted by thorswitch at August 19, 2003 07:16 PM | TrackBack


Comments

Uh, could it be that a Web site design flunkie just got it wrong? Seems to me Bush did state "major combat operations" on the carrier.

Yeah, like senior White House officials are the ones actually updating the site.

Posted by: jd at October 27, 2003 04:26 PM

Fastidious much?

Posted by: SubUnitEx at October 27, 2003 04:48 PM

Yes, he DID say "major combat operations" in his speech. The problem, though, is that on the official websites, the headlines regarding the speech all spoke of "Combat operations" as having ended - NOT "major combat operation." That was how the government was presenting the transcripts of the speech and other articles referring to it - at least up until someone questioned Bush about his having said that "combat operations" had ended, and then, suddenly, someone decided they needed to go back through and add the word "Major" to all of the articles. In at least some cases, the articles were copies of press releases that had been sent out after the speech - and when they were sent out, they went out with the "combat operations" headline. Now, however, they want to make it LOOK like they sent out the press releases with a headline reading "major combat operation," which isn't the case at all.

In other words, they were fine with presenting the President's claims as having been that "combat operations" had ended until they got called on it, and then they went back and tried to change everything without indicating that there it had ever been presented in any other way - even though the original "combat operations" headline was used on the press releases that were sent out at the time of the speech.

If they wanted to change the headline, then they should have noted on - on the page containing the article - that the original headline had omitted the word "Major" and that they had gone back and corrected it on such-and-such a date.

Even on a blog like this, with very few exceptions, I document any changes I make to a story after it's published - and those exceptions are limited to things like minor spelling or grammar corrections that I catch within the first few minutes after it's been posted and those only go uncommented if they don't change the content or context of the article. Otherwise, I'll put a note at the bottom of the entry stating what changes were made, when they were made, and why. I don't think it's too much to ask the White House to hold to the same kind of a standard.

Posted by: kriselda jarnsaxa at October 27, 2003 05:30 PM

It is still there See
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/text/20030501-15.html

which differs from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/iraq/20030501-15.html

In the text version, the pages says 'President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended' while in the robot accessible version, it is ''President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended'.

Posted by: AC at October 27, 2003 06:41 PM

Why do sites like yours continue to sound so amazed that the US administration (any US administration) is so willing to creatively present the truth. The manipulation of the truth is how the "great" USA was built. Even though George W. is a bigger bullshitter than some of his counterparts, being president is not about presenting the truth. It is about getting the greatest financial return for the people who bankrolled the successful presidental candidate.

Having said that, I hope that sites like yours continue to flourish so that perhaps, just perhaps, more people will be made aware of the bullshit that US administrations present as the "truth".

Posted by: notayank at October 27, 2003 11:38 PM

Roba da matti.. certo, mi sorge anche un dubbio: possibile che BUSH, vista la reazione dei media, non abbia apportato alcuna modifica al file?
MMMH...

Posted by: zack at October 30, 2003 04:57 AM

You should read or reread Orwells 1984.

Posted by: pscript at October 31, 2003 09:59 AM

"the kids that are over there killing and being shot at"
Am I mistaken or did he say "the kids that are over there killing"? Not much of a surprise that they are being "being shot at", isn't it?

Posted by: Jolly Polly at October 31, 2003 10:55 AM

From a web design perspective, it is an interesting problem:

Prevent a google search on combat operations ended from pointing to your site as the top story without destroying information.

Solution:

Duplicate the text of the speech in a different directories .../text/ and .../iraq/

Change the iraq headline to something acceptable. MAJOR, with of course, new metadata and a title reflecting the new headline so the search engines get the whole story. Many people read only the headlines anyway.

Redirect so that the old URL points at the new headline in the iraq directory New

Change robots.txt to disallow .../text/

Tell the search engines to re-spider your site

This changes what people get when they search Google -- they used to get used to point to the whitehouse as the first entry as "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended" from the white house as the top rated link. Now
it shows the state department instead, and they've kept the old data available, not edited the president's speech, and by tossing in a few bad directories in robots.txt, they've made it look like an innocent mistake.

Kudos to the whitehouse webmasters for a job well done. The medium is the message, and they can control the medium.


From a web design perspective, it is an interesting problem:

Prevent a google search on 'combat operations ended' from pointing to your site as the top story without destroying information.

Solution:

Duplicate the text of the speech in a different directories http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/text/20030501-15.html and http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/iraq/20030501-15.html

Change the iraq headline to something acceptable. MAJOR, with of course, new metadata and a title reflecting the new headline so the search engines get the whole story. Many people read only the headlines anyway.(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98006,00.html)

Redirect so that the old URL points at the new headline in the iraq directory
( http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html )

Change robots.txt to disallow .../text/

Tell the search engines to re-spider your site

This changes what people get when they search (Google http://www.google.com/search?q=president+combat+operations+ended ) -- they used to get pointed to the whitehouse as the first entry as "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended" from the white house as the top rated link. Nowit shows the state department instead, and they've kept the old data available, not edited the president's speech, and by tossing in a few bad directories in robots.txt, they've made it look like an innocent mistake and the state department is misquoting them.

Kudos to the whitehouse webmasters for a job well done. The medium is the message, and they can control the medium.

Posted by: AC at November 2, 2003 11:52 AM