T O P I C ��� R E V I E W
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Jay the Obscure
Member # 19
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posted
quote: White House Web Scrubbing Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.
White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
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For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.
"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."
A White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall, USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.
For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.
USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."
But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed."
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
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Cartman
Member # 256
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posted
And here I was thinking revisionist history had gone out of style in the West.
But on the other hand, false or misleading comments really shouldn't be on public display like that. You never know what impressions people might get about the adminstration's much-advertised incorruptibility, after all.
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Lee
Member # 393
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posted
"The warnterr will cost tens of billions on dollars. The warnterr was always going to cost tens of billions of dollars." Thank you, Mintruth.
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Cartman
Member # 256
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posted
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm
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The_Tom
Member # 38
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posted
Minitrue. And Miniluv, Minipax and Miniplenty, I think. It's been a while.
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Ritten
Member # 417
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posted
No Minimini? Or Mouse either I see....
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MinutiaeMan
Member # 444
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posted
I'll bet that the Wayback Machine has some useful things to say...
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