Bill Bennett: “I am going to take two literary allusions and put them together as the background for the points I wish to make. The…”

“I am going to take two literary allusions and put them together as the background for the points I wish to make. The first one is a novel that has become a worldwide classic called ``1984,'' written by George Orwell. You may recall that in this particular novel, George Orwell describes a terrifying future. And the principal character in his novel, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth. His job at the Ministry of Truth is to go back over old newspapers and clip out things that contradict the current party line and send those down the memory hole; in other words, destroy them, so that if someone comes along and tries to determine whether there is any past support for the present position, the past has been scrubbed to the point where everything there agrees with the present position. Anything that was said previously that disagrees with the present position of Big Brother, the figure that controls the world in the novel, has been sent down the memory hole. It has been destroyed. Keep that in mind as I take another literary allusion. This is an exact quote from Ben Bradlee, formerly editor of the Washington Post and one of the great journalists of our time who said: Journalism is the first rough draft of history. I cite those two because I want to put them together in the debate that has occurred on the floor and even more so that is going on out in the world of the media--the debate about whether we had proper justification for going into Iraq.…”