November 11, 2003
@ 03:40 PM

From the Memory Hole

The Memory Hole posted an extract from an essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, in which they explain why they didn't have the military push into Iraq and topple Saddam during Gulf War 1. Although there are differences between the Iraq situations in 1991 and 2002-3, Bush's key points apply to both.

But a funny thing happened. Fairly recently, Time pulled the essay off of their site. It used to be at this link, which now gives a 404 error. If you go to the table of contents for the issue in which the essay appeared (2 March 1998), "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" is conspicuously absent.

Ever since September 11, 2001 the news continues to sound more and more like excerpts from George Orwell's 1984. All is not lost though, it has been heartening to see that some teachers are using this incident as a way to teach their students about media literacy. My favorite is Rewriting History: The Dangers of Digitized Research by Peg Hesketh