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Et tu, Smithsonian?

By Anonymous

TPM flags a whopper in the caption beneath the Smithsonian's new portrait of George W. Bush (which is fortunately being disputed by Sen. Bernie Sanders):

The current wording of the caption states that Bush's term was marked by "the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

The Smithsonian's historians should know better. The claim that 9/11 led to the Iraq war, in the sense that the U.S. entered into the Iraq war as retribution for 9/11, is demonstrably false, and no amount of partisan posturing should affect the Smithsonian's account of history. Yes, a few Republican egos will be bruised if the Smithsonian acknowledges that 9/11 had nothing to do with the Iraq war, but that's a small price to pay for an accurate description of something so historically significant.

Full post as published by Economics of Contempt on January 12, 2009 (boomark / email).