NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Tue, 22 Jun 2004
Iraq and al-Qaeda
Kevin Drum has a pretty good unraveling
of the current "Yeah? Sez you!" banter coming from the Bush administration today.
But I am tired of everyone getting sucked in by this infantile crap. I wrote the following to him today;
I think that it's good advice for all of us.
I enjoyed your dismantling of the Iraq/Al Qaeda question today, but the
huge elephant in the room that no one seems to mention still remains: the
Bush administration never corrected the public record in the run-up to the
war, and they did everything in their power to make sure that public
"knowledge" of the facts remained flat-out wrong.
Whatever percentage of the public (high 60's, I think?) that believed that
Iraqis were the 9/11 hijackers, and that Saddam was behind the attacks,
could have been corrected *at any time* with a statement from the executive
branch of our government. The parsing of words taking place right now
consists of one long "we never *said* that they were..." from the
administration.
The point is, they never *SAID* the widely known truth that Iraq was *not
involved* until a couple of months ago, and they both allowed and
encouraged misconceptions to persist because it allowed them to manipulate
public opinion and served their political purposes, completely unrelated to
the facts of the matter. They still are. We are now stupidly arguing about
whether an Iraqi and an Al Qaeda member ever said hello on a street corner
anywhere. Idiocy!
This whole argument is barely worthy of a kindergarten sandbox, and someone
needs to inject some intellectual honesty back into this. Why in the world
are we letting the Bush administration control the talking points at this
late date? The foundational fact is that they cannot be trusted to tell the
truth. They are *way* beyond disingenuous. They are flat dishonest, and
they are such in a premeditated, Machiavellian way.
Say so. Don't spend your time in the Rove tar pit - he is the best in the
world at that stupid game. If you want to do an illuminating piece, grab
fifteen or twenty quotes from administration officials of the period and
write a side by side comparison of the same sentence, if they were telling
the whole truth as known at the time. You have the talent and the breadth
of knowledge to do something like this.
It's said that one can't prove a negative, but in this case, that is flat
out wrong. This is a criminal sin of omission, easily illustrated. Make 'em
answer "why didn't you correct the record?" The whole world knew by October
15th, 2001 that Iraq was not involved in the attack.
THAT would make for a compelling study, and a devastating bit of
journalism. The fact of the matter is that they can't answer facts. The
bottom line is that they are either manifestly incompetent or criminally
dishonest, and either one disqualifies them from the game.
Exit their game board. Make 'em come to your turf.
Posted at 15:41 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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