Wanna hear it? It’s a dandy. George Bush and the Democrats have conspired to hide the fact that we really did find Iraq’s WMD! Honest Native American, I’m not making that up. It’s not a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, nor a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, so let’s just call it the Grand Unifying Theory of Idiocy, shall we (details courtesy of Glenn Greenwald).
Melanie Phillips is a British neoconservative who has devoted herself to warning England that Muslims are taking over and destroying its culture. Her book, oh-so-cleverly titled Londonistan, warns of “the collapse of traditional British identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism.”
She has described James Baker and Jimmy Carter as “the kept creatures of the Arab world” who “are intent on smoothing the path to Israel’s destruction.” She thinks global warming is a “con-trick” because everything is “well within the normal cyclical fluctuations in temperature from century to century.” And on and on and on. Needless to say, she is a deeply admired figure in the world of Fox News and right-wing blogs.
But all of that is rendered moderate, restrained, sober and even sane by a new article she wrote for the British magazine, The Spectator (headline: I Found Saddam’s WMD Bunkers), which claims that: (a) WMDs really were found in Iraq after the invasion, (b) they were located in vast underground bunkers (c) which contained “nuclear, chemical and biological materials”, but (d) the U.S., through negligence, failed to secure those sites and, as a result, (e) the WMDs were stolen by The Terrorists and/or Syrian agents, who now have them and are actively plotting (along with China, Russia and North Korea) to use them against the West, but —
(f) because the Bush administration is so embarrassed by their failure to prevent the theft of all these dastardly weapons, and because Democrats are embarrassed by this discovery because it proves that Saddam really did have WMDs all along, they have all jointly created a vast conspiracy where they conceal the discovery of WMDs in order to cover up for their negligence.
Oh Georgy Boy, how low you have fallen in the esteem of your former and most loyal comrades! Those who are commenting on Ms. Phillip’s screed favorably (or otherwise promoting this “story) include many of the glitterati of the right wing blogosphere:
(cont.)
Instapundit (i.e., Glenn Reynolds)
Powerline
Michelle Malkin
Pajamas Media
David Horowitz
And they are hardly the only ones to herald this pile of manure as God’s Own Truth. It’s become a cause celebre on the right wing blogs. In fact, if a wingnut blog hasn’t yet commented on it, that likely means the proprietor is either hospitalized and in a coma or dead.
I won’t bore you with the myriad ways this tale of a joint venture between Bush and the Democrats to deceive the American public is incredibly stupid and deranged, as you can read Glenn’s analysis on this topic for yourself, if you wish. Or go read the Melanie Phillips’ original article in the Spectator if you like. It’s almost the equivalent of a satirical piece you might find at The Onion, so I suppose there is some amusement value to reading it for that reason, if nothing else.
But doesn’t the fact that so many of our conservative “blog buddies” have jumped on this inane conspiracy theory tell us something about how truly desperate they are to find their lost pony in Iraq, even if it means taking down their former idol? I know the Bush administration and Fox News, Limbaugh etc. are fond of creating new realities (i.e., propaganda) for us to examine. However, like that Play Station television ad, it seems most of the wingnuts have chosen not just to play in them, but to live in them as well, no matter how nutty and contrived those realities may appear to the rest of us. I guess the truth that they were cheerleaders for the single largest foreign policy mistake in our nation’s history is just too hard face.
