Wednesday, July 12, 2006

A Lie, Repeated Often Enough, ...

"Novak triggered one of the capital's most tangled investigations with a July 2003 column reporting that Plame had suggested sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger to investigate whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear material from that country -- an unsupported claim that was included in President Bush's State of the Union speech." (emphasis added).

That is from a Howard Kurtz column in the Washington Post today. The fact is that the claim was very well supported, even by the CIA that sent Joe Wilson to Niger and found his "evidence" to be worthless, but it is unsupported if the definition of unsupported is that Joe Wilson, international man of intrigue, doesn't agree. So it depends on the meaning of the word unsupported - and it is really unfair for us to assume that Kurtz would use it in the way the typical readers would define it. He's part of the free press, and in addition to divulging sensitive classified information, the other privilege that the free press enjoys is defining their own terms in an idiosyncratic fashion.

But not to belabor this point, this is a great example of repeating a claim (usually a simple one) so often in the face of all evidence to the contrary (usually complex)until a lie becomes a truth. Among the other lies, repeated ad infinitum, without any support, are these:

1) Bush (or his admin) claimed Iraq was responsible for 9/11 - never happened.
2) Bush (or his admin) claimed Iraq was an imminent threat - never happened, in fact on several occasions, they explicitly said Iraq was not an imminent threat.
3) Iraq and Al Queda had no ties whatsoever - there is a mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise. Not deep ties, granted, but not no ties, which is what is always claimed. In fact, the recent killing of Al Zarquawi mentioned without a sense of irony that he had been in Iraq since 2002, prior to our invasion.

I'm sure there are others. And these are only the factual claims. More problematic, and idiotic, are the pearls of "wisdom" divined from the uncanny ability of Bush-haters to read his mind:

1) Bush "misled" us about WMDs in Iraq. Apparently 10 good years of gathering bad and faulty intelligence, most of which pre-dated Bush, fall on Bush, who was able to convince nearly every Democratic senator at the time that the intelligence was accurate, even though he surely knew otherwise.
2) Bush wanted to avenge the assassination attempt on his father, and that is why he went to war.

Etc. Etc. As the old saying goes, a lie repeated ofen enough gains the semblance of truth.

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Thank God for Zinadine Zidane, whose head butt of the Italian provided the only memorable moment from the soccer World Cup finals. This is the problem with soccer - a once every four year event can be decided by penalty kicks. In addition, the only two goals that happen in the game were the result of a penalty kick and a header off of a corner kick. No organic goal in 2 hours of play. Great athletes with great skills, no doubt, but when the rules of a game make it highly probable that it will be decided without one natural goal, why should we bother watching? I'd personally rather that they televise these games with the express intent of trying to capture on film all of the fights that break out in the stands among drunken Europeans, and make that the highlight of the coverage. Interview the guys after the fight, make a judgment on who won, etc. Short of that, all that we have to look forward to is a guy headbutting his opponent, and there seems to be all too little of that to justify the time.

4 Comments:

Blogger pbryon said...

Odd that many on the left rant and rave about how immoral Bill Clinton and the selling of the Lincoln bedroom, but express no such outrage with David Safavanian, Jack Abramoff, or Scooter Libby.

To be honest, the level of partisanship these days is really starting to turn me off. And its on both sides of the aisle. I can't belive that I'm the only one.

10:05 AM  
Blogger MajTJKingKong said...

http://addictinggames.com/zidaneheadbuttgame.html

You will enjoy this game.

Cheers,

Kong

2:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hatch, you didn't mention three of the biggest and most often repeated lies of all: that there is no dissent in the scientific community about the cause and effect of global warming; tax cuts unfairly hurt the poor; and Bush's tax cuts will blow a hole in the defecit. I can understand a level of partianship in politics, I just can't take the blod face lies both sides are willing to spew these days. No wonder I have such a big Chartreuse habit.

4:27 AM  
Blogger Hatcher said...

Pulvarizer,

Hopefully you take no joy from the fact that every likely major Democratic candidate for president voted in favor of the Iraq war. Unlike the President, these Senators get to squawk and dismiss themselves for accountability, but what does that say about their judgment going forward when their judgment in the past has been, according to you, so fatally and obviously flawed? You can lay all the blame you see fit with Bush, but he had nearly universal backing at the time.

And, as you should know, it's a little early to be declaring the verdict of history.

The fact that you can say Saddam was a threat to no one is a product of Bush's success. 19 guys in 4 airplanes took at 3000 Americans in the span of hours. Give their 19 replacements, and their backers, access to some real weaponry, and my guess is that they can pretty well destroy Mr. Roger's neighborhood. Had we done nothing, the sanctions would have been lifted by a feckless and thoroughly bribed UN, and after another strike you'd be leaving a comment saying we should have seen this coming, and should have taken out Saddam. (not unlike Gore, who criticized Bush 1 for not finishing the job, and now finds us to be a totalitarian imperialistic nation).

We have no good choices - we only have bad and worse choices. It's easy to pretend there was a good choice, so that the one that was made appears to be an obvious worse choice, but that is really far from being clear.

4:11 PM  

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