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.