Goebbels Would Be Proud

Hitler's Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda would certainly smile at revisionist history like that put forth first by the NY Times' Thomas Friedman, and then by the Associated Press.  First up, Mr. Friedman, who finds that, lo and behold, the Iraq War is on the cusp of an American victory, and credit for that victory once it's fully secure should go where it's due - to Barack Obama and the Democrats.

In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq. There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.

That is the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world in a different direction.

I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.

If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national security credentials than that.

I wonder if that's a conclusion or a punch line.  The AP follows suit today with a nonsensical analysis of the causes of the mortage securities meltdown, the underlying cause of the financial crisis.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down,interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Nice research.  As Slublog put it, "The article doesn't mention Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the Community Reinvestment Act."  Why mention those items, particularly Rep. Frank?  Investors' Business Daily was able to connect the dots. 

And President Bush didn't propose regulating this industry, did he?  Oh, wait, he did, in 2003.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

I rest my case.  Either the AP needs a refresher course on research, or they're channeling Goebbels.