Rewriting history at the White House website? [UPDATE: No.]

         

UPDATE: Comments seem to validate the question mark I used in the original post. Doesn't change the sad absuridity of the "Mission Accomplished" banner, of course.

UPDATE II: Seems to have been debunked a while ago. Oops.

Comments

[David Hoggard]

There was no need for the question mark in your sentence.

Amazing, really.

[David Wharton]

"Reframing" rather than "rewriting"?

Anyway, what a lame move.

Will Rummy now start disappearing, Soviet-style, from cabinet photos?

[Chris H]

This little demonstration was thoroughly debunked weeks ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRHki5P6fc

[Lou Dobbs 2008]

www.LouDobbs4President.com

petition

[Jeffrey Sykes]

This conspiracy is lame.

Duh, the freakin angles are different between the photo and the video. How stoopid are some people?

[Jeffrey Sykes]

This dude gets into the physics of angles.

Call Rangle, Dingle and Frank.

[The CA]

Sorry, Ed- the site Chris H. mentioned clearly shows that your headline is false. There was no selective editing.

A mea culpa by you and Hoggard who drank the Kool-Aid is in order. Who is doing the real lying, Bush or your YOUTUBE friend?

[Bubba]

"This conspiracy is lame."

So is BDS.....from those who invent conspiracies, to those who post it on blogs like this.

Oh, what the heck!

Why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a chance to be arrogant?

[Bubba]

"Doesn't change the sad absuridity of the "Mission Accomplished" banner, of course."

Too funny, again!

That's EXACTLY the sort of thing you would expect somebody like Ed to say when embarrassed.

[Chrish]

Ed, the comments do a little more than "validate the question mark." They completely undermine the basis on which the question was even posed.

In other words, your update is pure spin and thus lame: it leaves your original insinuation somewhat intact while not admitting that this conspiracy has been debunked.

[The CA]

Wow, Ed, the "update on the question mark" is simply desparate. Why not just come and say that McIntee lied or at the very least distorted the truth and you're sorry you went for it. Why bleed for this guy? Just say it was crap, and you'll get credit for correcting the record.

[David Hoggard]

I just watched the "debunk" video. I was duped and should have looked into it further. I'm sorry for my initial comment.

[The CA]

Hoggard, your credibility goes up. Ed?

[Max Power]

Who is doing the real lying, Bush or your YOUTUBE friend?

Well, since you put it that way - the case is closed and the jury's gone home on whether Bush tells lies. So... that clears the YOUTUBE guy, doesn't it?

[Bubba]

"I'm sorry for my initial comment."

Good for you David.

Maybe I won't support the write-in candidacy of Elmer Fudd after all. Instead, I'll put my support behind Vernon Robinson.

[The CA]

No, but the argument that "it's okay for me to lie about your lies" by definition casts doubt on the declarants credbility to label something a lie- especially when the declarant knows they are wrong and refuses to admit it.

[The CA]

I think this calls for a CGBBC pile on because we all know that if someone on the Right had put this false story out and refused to clear the air, the LGBBC pile on complete with sarcasm and snarkiness would develop into a 50 plus post thread.

As it stands, I'll just have to remember this one for future reference when the inevitable pile on occurs in the future. But remember, these things aren't driven by ideology, are they? The whole pile on theory is the creation of a paranoid and unreasonably divisive mind, right? Wow, this is pretty funny.

[David Hoggard]

Bub, You are, and will continue to be in my eyes, the champion of lost causes. Thanks for opposing me on every turn.

I really don't see a big deal about admitting when you are wrong. Try it sometime.

But thanks for the accolades just the same to you and Sam.

[albaz]

What abject silliness! Sorry, Ed, but you are essentially correct. The idea that the Bush/Rove Whitehouse does not take into consideration the entire frame is ludicrous. Of course this is cropped to suit the desired "reality." Originally they circulated the picture of Bush with the wonderfully ironic Mission Accomplished banner overhead. And they used the MSM skilfully at first to do so. What difference does it make whether or not CNN or Fox or whomever used the space to trail messages though I see none in this picture.

We might remember that the whole purpose of the event was not to show how handsome W. was when standing on an aircraft carrier but to demonstrate his WAR creds. We are to forget that this pathetic, cowardly cretin ran away from war and from the site of the 9/11 disaster. To distract from that inconvenient fact was the purpose of the entire exercise.

From the silly flight suit to the posing of the carrier itself where the San Diego skyline could not be seen this was simply a typically stupid photo-op and no matter what the kool-aid sippers might want to say, the absence of both the flight suit and the banner are conscious decisions not natural events.

There were probably shots of Generalissimo W with the banner showing that were available. Why was this one used whatever the function of the black border?

Gack! We are dealing with the silliest of lost souls. Do not try to influence them with nuance. They cannot handle that for to do so they would have to admit their tiny brains are befuddled by it. You see, the staging of these crappy events while blowing the limbs, heads, and hearts off of and out of the innocent in order to retain political power makes them feel really important and powerful. These events made you and I sick to our stomachs. It made them feel real big.

[Nix]

A conspiracy? This scrubbing of sites is a little odd.

Is it me or is a photo missing
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/01/sprj.irq.main/
I found one that looks the right size...
http://web.lemoyne.edu/~hevern/weblog/photos/mission_accomplished.jpg

It's interesting that the video links don't seem to work. This from the Bush cheerleading channel strange huh?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85777,00.html

I believe that msnbc not having any history of the event may not help the non-conspiracy theory..

[ronjazz]

Well, the question mark certainly exists, whether the White House is using the Memeory Hole or not, so all of you gullible fools who still believe in this Sissy-In-Chief and his personal Goebbels haven't a leg to stand on. Send out for more Koolaid, though, you're still swallowing it whole. Fools.

[David Wharton]

I was gulled by the McIntee video, too, and I'm glad that it isn't true.

[Outlandish Josh]

Well, the question is whether thes bars have always been there or not, and whether or not they changed the nature of this video. There's no reason the WH communicatins corps could have changed all the videos they host.

This is the problem with the "memory hole." Unless you've got a copy of what was there before, you don't even know if something changed or not.

[scarshapedstar]

Note to wingnuts: This looks to be a mere coincidence, but there have been honest-to-god undeniable whitehouse.gov transcript scrubbings and the like caught by the Google Cache. Forgive us for jumping to conclusions when we've seen the same damn thing happen 20 times before.

[me]

The guy who posted the video seems to be deleting comments that point out it's BS. If he was honestly trying to point out something real, he's fess up and say that he was mistaken. He didn't, and hasn't. I believe that's because he's an inventor and encourager of conspiracy theories. Why would one encourage people to believe false criticisms? To allow others to "take them down" later, setting up the idea that if you can't believe one criticism, why should you believe any? Conspiracy theories provide a kind of straw man that can be used to represent all who disagree. IMO, he's a Republican supporter.

[Bubba]

Look at all the comments from people we've never heard from before, who crawled out of the woodwork to defend the undefendable.

Once again, why are we not surprised?

[Your Conscience]

To all Rape-Public-Cans, Neocon fake Americans, and members of the 101st Chickenhawk Keyboard brigade;

Your credentials to speak with authority on any subject other than your own, personal failures have been revoked. And every time any of you pathetic, lying weasels emerges from one of your holes to offer up yet another lame excuse for this epic, bloody disaster, I, and thousands of others like me, will be there to make sure you remember just what you and your fellow cheerleaders and those in government who insisted on this god-awful fiasco have wrought.

[Ed Cone]

A fiasco, to be sure...but that doesn't mean this McIntee guy gets a pass for getting it wrong about the video -- I've emailed him for comment, nothing back yet -- or that I get a pass for posting it without checking the facts.

[Court Jester]

There are 2 separate questions resulting from McIntee's video accusation: 1) Have the black bars always been on videos on the WH site? and 2) Was the original WH video edited to remove the Mission Accomplished banner?

It certainly appears that McIntee's claims about 1) are wrong, but that does not mean he's wrong about 2). My recollection from that time is that most of the videos of that speech featured the banner. While jumping to the wrong conclusion on 1) DOES diminish McIntee's credibility somewhat, 2) is still an open issue which should be resolvable by independant means.

It's a classic example of lame reasoning: find one error in a list of claims/facts, then in a grand show of hand-waving and indignant words try to claim that all the remaining claims/facts must somehow also be wrong. All without resorting to silly things like additional facts or arguments.

Of course, that's been the standard MO of the White House for the last 6 years, so no wonder the acolytes of the 101st use the technique.

[Austin Cooper]

We're dealing with the wrong issue. The real question is, why aren't there black bars "blocking out" the most offensive thing in these videos -- the As-Yet-Unindicted Sock-Puppet-in-chief?

[Fred Gregory]

HLAS..Busted. And so willing !

[Britt Whitmire]

I look at the White House website all the time (for the show, among other things) and I've never noticed the black bars.

Not that I'm saying McIntee didn't screw up...because he did. Pretty funny debunking.