Mick Fealty at Slugger O'Toole picked up an exchange I had yesterday with the historion Anthony Beevor on Eddie Mair's BBC's PM show. Mick has published a short transcript of the two exchanges. It was started by a Guardian report from Hay by Charlotte Higgins. Part of the argument for Mick is that bloggers should learn some of the historian's discipline. I'm all for that. I feel my second answer blathered a bit as I really didn't think Beevor's case was serious (the idea that the digital record is easier to purge than a paper one is absurd; that the histrical record was just shut away and preserved is ridiculous).

I looked for something positive and agreed with him about teaching the writing of essays. I guess this led to my post about long live history! I'm against the Beevor idea that there is just one narrative record and this is the history waiting to be told if only the historian can get to the record. The Guardian article reports that Beevor doesn't think a reliable history of the Iraq war is possible because of all the covering up that has gone on. Really? Well, here are two recorded episodes about its planning.

1. How it started: This is what President Bush told three US Senators who were being briefed by Condi Rice in the White House in March 2002, a year before the invasion: "Fuck Saddam, I'm taking him out". 

2. The reason given to the public: Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair,  "for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction... ”

Instant, yes. Documented as a historian might wish, yes.