Why is invading Iraq like mailing anthrax?
- No one accepts responsibility for the consequences.
- The costs of cleaning up the mess are outrageous.
- Years from now, we will still be paying for it.
- It contaminates everything it touches.
- People accept it because it is delivered with misleading information.
- We still don't know why they did it.
- ..........Your reason here......
Now that Cheney is playing Press the Face.
Forget about the torture.
Forget about imperfect intelligence.
Let's talk serious analysis....
I ain't talkin' some half-baked-crazy-cable-press-release-parsing-talking point-teleprompter-reading-lip-synching-main-stream-media-stenography-pool-access-seeking-book-deal-
chasing-glory-hound-batshit-insane-crazy-rants.
I'm talking about tortured logic and the imperfect past tense. Why? 'cause that's how they get ya. Every.time.baby.
Quick, Sherman! To the Way Back Machine!
Remember this golden oldie?
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
I could put that to a phat groove and drop a needle on it like you wouldn't believe. Make it go down smoother than sake on ice and dance 'til you drop. But ya know... here's a question no one ever asked:
If we spend BILLIONS of dollars a year on our own intelligence,
why would the President need to rely on British Government sources?
I could think of one reason. And it's a Doocie...I mean ... it's a Doozie...
If you quote a liar telling a lie you know to be a lie
that doesn't mean you are lying when you report it
as something the liar has learned.
Don't shake your head. You know I'm right.
Nice to see that Bush embraced the standards of tabloid journalism for his State of the Union address. Gives it a sort of "common man" touch, don't it? It certainly makes for easy reading on the nightly news. Speaking of that, I know the new style is to pull stuff out of context and ignore everything around it. Think of it as "Blink" meets Short Attention Span Theater. That might work for Supreme Court nominations, but deep down we all know it's not fair.
So let me be the first to be fair.
Out of deference to our new president.
Because he likes to be fair.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Actually there are a few problems with that line.
First - As I said before, if you repeat a lie you know to be a lie but attribute it to another liar than you technically are not lying. However it is clearly misrepresenting the situation.
Second - The line did not appear in a vacuum. It was embedded... in a paragraph. The sentence preceding it was also artful in it's misrepresentation. The sentence following it was known to be patently false. Here is the whole paragraph:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."
Basically George "Nukeliar" Bush was no more of a straight shooter than Slick Willy.
But who knew he was the master of the imperfect tense? The above paragraph uses an ambiguous historic reference in the past imperfect to imply a current threat, follows it with an artful distortion to support the claim, rounds it out with a false claim that gets attributed to vague entities, and closes with the age-old trial lawyer ploy of pointing out to the jury the accused has not defended himself from false claims, thereby proving he is guilty.
See what you missed sleeping through English?
Third - That was just part of a concerted effort to represent Iraq as an imminent threat. So dangerous we could not afford to wait for the UN to sanction action. So dangerous we had to act pre-emptively or risk the prospect of a nuclear attack. If you are going to have a policy of pre-emptive military action against potential targets, your intelligence has to be impeccable. Otherwise you are merely a "rogue
nation" to use the term of former REAGAN ADMINISTRATION appointee, Clyde Prestowitz. If that doesn't pan out, you are going to have real intellectuals like William F. Buckley all up in your grill writing nasty editorials with titles like, "Who Screwed Up?" asking tough questions like:
"Who screwed up? Who deceived, or was carried away? And what vaccines have our leaders taken to guard against other deceptions of like character?"
It's not just 16 words taken out of context. It's the lynchpin of a concerted campaign to pursuade the world this was a legitimate "test case" for a revolutionary new National Security Strategy unveiled in September 2002 and known as the "Bush Doctrine."
Of course no one said it was just WMD. Having WMD is one thing, you still have to deliver the suckers. And no one claimed Iraq could attack the US.... but Al Qaeda could.... hmmmmm.... now there's a possibility.
So we get "reports" from the Czech intelligence service. WTF? Now we're quoting the intelligence of a country that is too poor to afford vowels? I think that's what momentarily emboldened the press to jump on Bush and Blair in this famous exchange:
Q: One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.
Now I could play "grab the quote" and stop there to PROVE Bush and Blair were clearly denying any link between Iraq and al Qaeda, but I want to be fair to the 70% of Americans who were convinced of the contrary even at that late date.
Here's the REST of Tony Baloney's response. He's a lot more loquacious than taciturn Dubya. Besides, if you give up the Iraq/AQ link meme... how you gonna convince the rubes that the WMD could wind up in their Wheaties? No, this is why they trotted Tony out with George...because he actually speaks English. Watch him work his magic before your very eyes:
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question. The one thing I would say, however, is I've absolutely no doubt at all that unless we deal with both of these threats, they will come together in a deadly form. Because, you know, what do we know after September the 11th? We know that these terrorists networks would use any means they can to cause maximum death and destruction. And we know also that they will do whatever they can to acquire the most deadly weaponry they can. And that's why it's important to deal with these issues together.
He starts with a firm assertion about two very real problems. He labels them threats which gives them an immediacy and then deftly inserts completely unsubstantiated speculation. Before you can even begin to object he invokes the magical phrase "September 11th" and faster than Dorothy's Ruby Slippers could bring her home, he is off to Lessons Learned Land. The beauty of it is he doesn't lie. He just packs this all on the back of a vague antecedent, "these terrorists." Which terrorists? The men who attacked us on 9/11? They're dead. I give Tony props for fancy footwork, but even he wouldn't be so crazy as to invoke Zombie Terrorists Back From the Dead.
What we're looking at here, however, is a resurrection. By relying on the past imperfect and then switching to the future perfect it appears as if the old hijackers are back. More correctly, they never left. So what if we never find the mastermind lurking just beyond reach constantly taunting us from the nether reaches. The message is clear: They're out there. The ironic part here is this time the role of Orwell's Goldstein is played by a Muslim. That's ironic but not surprising. Anyone familiar with the history of the Crusades knows the two have been reliably interchangeable scapegoats for almost a thousand years. It's like a tradition with the British.
But hey, who cares about history? We need to look forward. That's how we can plan for the threats to come. To paraphrase former Vice President Cheney
Simply stated, there is no doubt
that tortured logic combined with artfully deployed language
are powerful weapons of mass destruction.