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Someone once pointed out that
"History is written by the victors."
What this means, is that those in power often control what internal conversations and deliberations will be released and which explanations are going to be given to the public for actions. Those in power are unlikely to portray their decisions as misguided or imbecilic.
It is a characteristic of authoritarian regimes that the group in power writes history in such a manner as to portray their actions and decisions favorably and when a new faction assumes control they "rewrite history" to make their predecessors actions appear to be the cause of current problems. This was repeatedly the case in the old communist Soviet Union. The problem was not a communist problem, it was a problem with a totalitarian regime.
The United States has long enjoyed what most would percieve as an unfettered access to the truth in regards to historical events; however the very fact that this question is asked (Why are the Democrats trying to rewrite history?) indicates that this is no longer the case.
Normally the flow of information has been so slow (and the press and opposition party respectful of the current administration ) that questions as to motivation and exactly what was know were left to later generations (such as the questions as to whether or not FDR knew about or should have anticipated the attack on Pearl Harbor); but we now live in the information age. Richard Nixon and The Watergate breakin probably mark the end of the time when Presidential decisions and knowledge were regarded as so priveleged that they were not open for questioning until well after the end of term.
When you have a President who remarks that he no longer cares what polls say and is not interested in the opinions of The American Public , but is making decisions to further his personal agenda then it becomes incumbent upon others to question his decisions and ask for clarification of the basis on which they are made. This includes scrutinizing past decisions which have monumentally impacted the country.
Anyone who has a modicum of intelligence could have forseen that an invasion of Iraq and removal of its military threat to the region would have removed the Saudi Arabian's dependence upon the United States as an ally to protect them from invasion. This dependence had long guaranteed that they would maintain the price of crude oil at an artificially low level. Once the threat of agression by a neighboring state was removed, they would be free to raise prices to whatever the world market would bear. Additionally, while they had in the past had a strong reason to root out fundamentalist groups and terrorist cells which threatened US interests, this is no longer the case unless these groups threaten them personally.
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