White House Alters Webpages About Iraq Combat

Remember when Bush was pretending to be a fighter pilot and landed on
that aircraft carrier? Those were good times for W, it was looking like
we'd won the war (Mission Accomplished!) and he even said that combat
was over. However, after a few months of one or two American casualties
a day Bush changed his mind. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did I say combat was
over? I meant major combat." Now when you read about the Mission Accomplished debacle you hear about the end of major
combat. I know it seems sort of trivial, but it's an important point.
When the President of the United States makes a statement about a war,
he should be quoted accurately. Under no circumstances should he be
allowed to go back in time and try to change his words.
I know this is old news, but it bears revisiting since during
Wednesday's press briefing White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan
issued the following challenge to reporters:

Q: Has the White House taken any move to restrict or put
some information on its website out of reach of search engines like
Google? And can you tell us whether the White House has -- makes any
effort to go in and change documents that are already out there, for
instance, press releases, statements on Iraq? MR. McCLELLAN: I heard
some of those reports, and I was somewhat puzzled by them. Every page
on our website is searchable. All information regarding Iraq is
searchable. We would encourage people to come to visit our website and
look for that information. We want the website to continue to be fully
accessible and open to all people who wish to visit it. Q: The stories
on the -- that are making their way around the Internet are that there
are some new protocols in place which makes it hard to get to reach
some of the Iraq and September 11th information if you go through a
search engine, not if you come straight in through the White House
website. The implication, they say, is that you are making some
material captive only to your own restrictions and you can go in and
change, for instance, the word "major combat" on the headlines of the
President's speech from March 1st -- I mean, May 1st. MR. McCLELLAN: I
don't know who the individuals are that are making some of these
allegations, but all subjects available -- are available on the White
House website, including on Iraq. And they're completely accessible to
all Internet users. And that's the way we want it to be. All this
information is searchable, it's all available there on our website. And
that's what it will -- it will continue to be. Q: It's not your policy
to go back in and change the -- MR. McCLELLAN: Well, do you have a specific instance you want me to look into to?
I will be glad to. But that's the bottom line on our website; it's all
there, it's all searchable, and please come visit it. It's
WhiteHouse.gov.

Wouldn't you know it, the fine folks at the Memory Hole have found a specific instance of after-the-fact changes:

When the White House published the text of and photos from
Bush's speech announcing the supposed end of the Iraq attack, the
headline read: "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have
Ended." But on Tuesday, 19 Aug 2003, the Cursor website noticed that
the headline had been changed to read: "President Bush Announces Major
Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." The word "major" had been added.
Apparently, with the quagmire resulting in at least one dead US soldier
a day--not to mention even more injuries, dead Iraqis, and
sabotage--that headline had proved incorrect. Therefore, straight out
of 1984, the headline was stealthily altered to make it seem as if
that's what it had always said.

Check out the screen captures here.

"What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. " -George Orwell, 1984

Posted by flow Frazao on November 7, 2003 at 10:39 AM | Permalink