At The Atlantic, Adam Serwer dissects the southern deification of confederate general Robert E. Lee.

In the Richmond Times Dispatch, R. David Cox wrote that “For white supremacist protesters to invoke his name violates Lee’s most fundamental convictions.” In the conservative publication Townhall,  Jack Kerwick concluded that Lee was “among the finest human beings that has ever walked the Earth.” John Daniel Davidson, in an essay for The Federalist, opposed the removal of the Lee statute in part on the grounds that Lee “arguably did more than anyone to unite the country after the war and bind up its wounds.” Praise for Lee of this sort has flowed forth from past historians and presidents alike.

This is too divorced from Lee’s actual life to even be classed as fan fiction; it is simply historical illiteracy.

White supremacy does not “violate” Lee’s “most fundamental convictions.” White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions.

Stripped from mythology, Serwer notes, the real Lee ordered the torture of recaptured slaves, refused to free slaves after a plantation owner freed them in his will, captured free black Americans in the north to sell as slaves in the south, refused to exchange captured black soldiers, who he asserted to now be property of southern citizens, and turned a blind eye, post-war, to violence perpetrated against black citizens by the white students then under his control. Monuments to Robert E. Lee should no more grace southern towns than monuments to Saddam Hussein should tower over Iraqi squares.

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—War was about oil—Wolfowitz:

If confirmed, this will be explosive:

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war [...]

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Shit. Assuming the report is accurate, Wolfy has undercut the "pretend" reason for war (WMDs) and admitted the real reason (oil), all in a single week.