Via Frank Rich, we get word that GQ is publishing some pics about the Iraq war. GQ, nee Gentlemen’s Quarterly, is a Conde Naste magazine. The website is style.com. And they have something that the investigative press does not. What a concept.
What they have are pictures of the coversheets sent by Donald Rumsfeld to George Bush. The coversheets were for briefings of the highest classification and with very limited distribution. But what is remarkable are the Bible quotes on them. Rumsfeld sent coversheets with Biblical quotes to a President who thought he was doing God’s work. Here are the first two:
March 17, 2003:
Quote: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?” “Here am I Lord, send me.” Isaiah 6:8
Picture: Soldiers in battlegear, praying.
March 19, 2003:
Quote: If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast, O LORD. Psalm 139:9-10
Picture: Launch deck of an aircraft carrier, crewman in the foreground, F-18 in the background, and it looks like some smoke from a just completed launch.
The pictures are in a Flash module, so they can not be extracted; you’ll need to go to the GQ site to see them.
I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.