In his latest column, Nicholas Kristof provides us some more evidence of the Bush Administration’s congenital inability to
tell the truth about much of anything, in this case (again), Iraq.
Mr. Cheney has cited a Zogby International poll to back his claim that there is "very positive news" in Iraq. But the pollster, John Zogby, told me, "I was floored to see the spin that was put on it; some of the numbers were not my numbers at all."
Mr. Cheney claimed that Iraqis chose the U.S. as their model for democracy "hands down," and he and other officials say that a majority want American troops to stay at least another year. In fact, Mr. Zogby said, only 23 percent favor the U.S. democratic model, and 65 percent want the U.S. to leave in a year or less.
"I am not willing to say they lied," Mr. Zogby said. "But they used a very tight process of selective screening, and when they didn't get what they wanted they were willing to manufacture some results. . . . There was almost nothing in that poll to give them comfort."
"Not willing to say they lied"? Well, sure, um-hmmm. Okay. I’m told they put the fake snow out at the malls last weekend, which means we are hurtling toward that season when the charitable among us tries to put the best face on just about anything. Mr. Zogby obviously is feeling mighty charitable.
For those of us whose charitable nature toward the Bush Administration ran out one or two Christmases ago, Vice President Cheney’s "tight process of selective screening" is scarcely a surprise.
An example of this "screening"? In the poll, commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute, only 35.3 percent of Iraqis believe that the United States will help Iraq over the next five years, while 50 percent said they think the United States will hurt the country. Half the 600 people surveyed in four cities said the United Nations will help Iraq, while a quarter said they think the UN won't have any influence.
I don’t know exactly where I would rate Cheney's latest BS on the
Mendacity Index. Maybe a 3.8 or so.
Kristof himself is not so charitable. But I think he gets it wrong, anyway.
He argues that the Administration in this, and other instances, may not have been lying. Rather, out of delusion, it actually believes its own spin. From Kristof’s perspective, this is worse than lying because it puts Bush in the same box as Saddam Hussein at the end – isolated, ill-informed, dependent on men fearful of telling him the truth, and thus incapable of making appropriate decisions.
Ill-informed Bush certainly is. But, as we know after months of reporting, there were plenty of people – from Joe Wilson to dozens of researchers at the CIA, from scientists to UN inspectors trying to provide accurate assessments of the situation in Iraq. While there was certainly room for legitimate disagreements about the meaning of the various intelligence evaluations, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the crew willfully ignored and distorted this information, and, when necessary, concocted their own. Their policy is no doubt delusional. But this doesn’t require them to believe their own lies.
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