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Mideast account ignored truth

If there was ever a guy who could put a hard right curve to any topic while polishing George W. Bush’s image, it’s Charles Krauthammer.

Columnists often cherry-pick the facts they need to sell their positions, but they should be accurate in whatever tale they’re spinning. Maybe Bush did have a doctrine calling for Arab freedom as Krauthammer’s March 5 column claims, but it wasn’t the Bush-Cheney team’s aim to free Iraqis from a cruel autocrat. It was to free Iraqis from a cruel autocrat who didn’t support U.S. interests (unlike Mubarak, Ben Ali and Saleh), and did it so blatantly. Still, it’s Krauthammer’s column, so he can spin it any way he wants.

Where he crosses from editorial license into just plain wrong is when he says, “… Iraq today is the only functioning Arab democracy, with multiparty elections and the freest press.” I wonder what Lebanon thinks about that? Following Lebanon’s 2009 elections, its parliament was made up of two major and seven minor parties. And had he Googled “Lebanon newspaper,” Krauthammer would have found over 50 privately owned newspapers published in Lebanon. Neither Iraq nor Lebanon qualify as model democracies, but come on, get the facts straight.

Jeff MacLennan

Nine Mile Falls



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