the glory and the horror

Texas Monthly came out with their best BBQ in Texas rankings, of which Snow’s BBQ in Lexington took the #1 spot.

So Scotty and I decided a couple weeks ago to try to hit up Snow’s to check out their BBQ. We left after my early morning men’s group and drove about an hour and half, and got to Lexington probably just around 11.

As we pulled up, we noticed there was a closed sign in the window, but there were cars all parked along the street. We thought that was a bit odd, so we ambled into the trailer that served as the restaurant. It smelled delightful inside, but it was nearly deserted. A few folks hanging around, a couple people behind the counter, but no meat.

We inquired about the possibility of getting some meat, and they informed us that they ran out of their 600 lbs of meat that morning a 0900. Yes, 0900. They open at 0800.

Scotty went back another Saturday, and he was there around 0930, and he got one of the last pieces of brisket. He said it was good, and that we’d have to go back to get some more.

LA Times Opinion – Bush never lied to us about Iraq

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it “did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments.” The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found “no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

This is something that has bugged me for some time. While I’m not the biggest fan of Bush’s war in Iraq (and it is clear that the planners really underplanned this one), one count that I think he has clearly been exonerated on is the accusation that he DELIBERATELY and WILLFULLY misled the public. He was operating on the intelligence he had at the time, as did Congress in authorizing the use of force.

Now, if the intelligence was faulty, well, that’s another thing. That’s part of the nature of the beast. You’re trying to get information from a source that doesn’t want to give it to you, and they are parties who have a vested interest in disinformation as well. So what do you do? You go with what you have and you have to make decisions on the information you have. In this case, the information was wrong, but there was no way to know that from where Bush/Congress sat in 2002-2003.

The point is that the left is trying to score points by intentionally ignoring their own findings. There were multiple reports put out by Congress itself that said Bush did not intentionally mislead anyone. There is a significant difference between the morality of lying and just being mistaken.

Keep in mind that this opinion piece is written by the assistant editor of The New Republic, a well-known center-left magazine.

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