Today's must read

Mr. President? More like this, please. And keep 'em coming.

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.

BY PETER WEHNER

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

[Empasis mine]

Wehner, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, then procedes to demolish these myths utterly. And notes, "These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom." Well, to a large extent they already have become conventional wisdom, thanks to the steady drumbeat of doom and gloom in the press, as well as the silly antics of anti-war congress critters.

Stephen Spuriell calls this op-ed a good start.

Conservatives have been making these arguments over and over, but with this op-ed the White House has provided a keystone to which supporters of the administration's policy in Iraq can return whenever we hear one of these tired attacks dredged up. I hope we're seeing the beginning of a revitalized communications strategy within the White House.

I hope so, too.