Joe Conason: And You Thought World War II Was Over?

Historical falsification, when spoken by the President of the United States to slander one of his greatest predecessors, should not go unanswered. In a display of the extremist ideology that drives politics and policy in his administration, George W. Bush chose a platform in Latvia to repeat an old right-wing slur against Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Mr. Bush said that the 1945 Yalta conference where Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin to plan the end of the Second World War "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact."

For the President to utter such cheap remarks about Roosevelt (and Churchill, whom he ridiculously imagines to be his model) was unfortunate. For him to utter those remarks on foreign soil, during ceremonies commemorating the end of the war fought so bravely by Roosevelt and Churchill, was unforgivable.

Mr. Bush sounded as if he (or his chief thinker, Karl Rove) had received special tutoring from noted fabulist Ann Coulter. Her regurgitation of these same themes in a book-length screed earned the repudiation of many decent conservatives and every competent historian who bothered to take notice.