First Door on the Left

The top-recommended diary on Daily Kos right now is entitled “Bush Caught Lying About Haditha.”

I’m not so sure.

The two news articles cited seem to corroborate one another.

This diarist uses this article to support the claim that Mr. Snow told the media on May 30th that Mr. Bush had just then (on that date) learned about the Haditha incident…

WASHINGTON - President Bush learned of reports that U.S. Marines killed two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians only after reporters began asking questions, the White House said Tuesday.

Asked when Bush was first briefed about the events in Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in western Iraq, White House press secretary Tony Snow replied Tuesday: “When a Time reporter first made the call.”

Time magazine was first to report, in March, that the U.S. military was investigating a dozen Marines for possible war crimes in the November incident. The killings, which included women and children, came after a bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine.

He (or she) then cites this article to illustrate that Mr. Bush knew about the incident back in March.

On March 10, the findings were given to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the first Marine ever to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rumsfeld told aides that the case promised to be a major problem. He called it “really, really bad — as bad or worse than Abu Ghraib,” recalled one Pentagon official. On March 11, President Bush was informed, according to the White House.

So, from the first article we find that Mr. Snow reports that Mr. Bush first heard about Haditha when Time magazine “first made the call.” We also learn that Time first reported the incident in March.

From the second article, we learn that Mr. Bush was informed about Haditha on March 11.

While it is not exactly terrific that the so-called President of the United States learned about this incident as the result of a report in Time magazine, I fail to see where the lie is here. Am I missing something?

There is enough bad to be reported about George W. Bush and his failed administration that we really don’t need to be making stuff up. Sometimes we need to reign in our enthusiasm just a bit.

Update: The diary on Daily Kos has been corrected. Its title now reads “Bush NOT Caught Lying About Haditha [updated with correction].”