Jon Stewart Trots Out 'Bush Lied' Meme to Defend Rice, Obama

The Left got enormous mileage out of the “Bush Lied” meme.

Democrats and Republicans alike told the public for years that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction based on intelligence gathered by both the U.S. and other countries.

That didn’t matter to liberals who pounced when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq failed to secure such a weapons stash. Their drumbeat successfully chipped away at President George W. Bush’s authority with the dutiful help of the press.

Now, “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart is re-using a variation of that meme to distract us from the erroneous story peddled by Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., in the hours after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.

On last night’s episode, Stewart attacked GOP senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for daring to criticize Rice for telling us the attack was sparked by a YouTube video.

Progressives like Stewart can’t defend the indefensible, so they’re using deflection instead. In this case, it’s bringing up the fact that both McCain and Graham echoed Bush’s talking points on Iraq’s weapons program.

“If only we had a more direct comparison to make here. Like another high-ranking government official passing what they knew at the time was misleading intelligence to the American public on a Sunday news show, also in line to become secretary of state, and was African American, and a woman, and lets say her name was also Rice. That’d be something.”

Stewart then played a clip of Condoleezza Rice suggesting that Iraq was attempting to build a nuclear weapon, along with clips of McCain and Graham saying it was wrong to criticize her.

Once again, Stewart’s snark ignores cold realities. Intelligence estimates at the time of the Secretary of State’s comments supported her claim. In the more recent case, the best intel available conflicted with the line Susan Rice was trotted out to parrot.