It’s probably impossible to wank any harder than Bill Kristol without starting a forest fire. Poor Billy is concerned that Anne E. Kornblut of the Washington Post is distorting what Sarah Palin said today during the send-off of her son, Track, to the sands of Iraq. Here is what Palin said:
Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”
Seems straightforward, right? Governor Palin told an assembly of troops about to be deployed to Iraq that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans” on September 11th, 2001. The Washington Post then notes that Iraq did not have any role in attacking us on September 11th, 2001 and that Palin’s remarks are therefore nonsensical. But it turns out that her remarks do make sense if your name is Bill Kristol.
It makes no sense for Kornblut to claim that Palin is arguing here that Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out 9/11–obviously Palin isn’t saying that our soldiers are now going over to Iraq to fight Saddam’s regime. Palin isn’t linking Saddam to 9/11.
She’s linking al Qaeda in Iraq to al Qaeda.
Why does this remind me of McCain adviser John Goodman’s plan to solve the problem of 45 million Americans without health coverage?
“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”
…According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured – everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. “So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care,” he said.
If you simply define reality in a way that suits you, you can make an argument that Albania is the real culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. Bill Kristol acknowledges that there can be some debate over the issue of culpability.
People can debate how intimate that connection is [ed note: between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq], and how much of the fight in Iraq is now against al Qaeda in Iraq–but it’s simply the case that Palin is not saying what Kornblut says she is, and that the Washington Post is, right now, leading its paper with a clear distortion of what Palin said.
Even if there are three or five Iraqis in Iraq who call themselves al-Qaeda, they still have nothing to do with the people that planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks. Even if you look at the people that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks you’ll quickly realize that they came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt (for the hijackers) and Pakistan and Afghanistan (for the funding and training). Set aside for a moment that we didn’t, other than Afghanistan, attack or retaliate against any of those countries, it should be obvious that al-Qaeda is a transnational organization. They have adherents in Iraq, and they have them in Australia and Canada, too.
Need I remind you that Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq were largely fabrications of military intelligence’s imagination?
…According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured – everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. “So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care,” he said.
head explodes
People can debate how intimate that connection is [ed note: between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq], and how much of the fight in Iraq is now against al Qaeda in Iraq–but it’s simply the case that Palin is not saying what Kornblut says she is, and that the Washington Post is, right now, leading its paper with a clear distortion of what Palin said.
head explodes even further
And as a bonus, the Iraq/9-11 lie gets repeated to a whole new crop of voters.
Once again the GOP dominates another 24-hour news cycle, as they will do right up until the election they steal.
And now on the front page of the WaPo is Cindy McSame’s drug addiction.
“The MSM is sexist11!!one” for another week and McSame gets a free 10 point swing in the polls.
There is no point in going after Palin. The media will do it anyway because she’s incompetent. She’s saying these things on purpose and sandbagging the horrible, misogynist liberal media into attacking her, keeping Obama out of the news.
It’s working brilliantly. Everytime she opens her mouth, the media sticks its foot in there, and McSame gets a free boost.
And Obama will never get his message across. STOP. TALKING. ABOUT. SARAH. FUCKING. PALIN.
It is the only way Obama can save his campaign.
There is nothing misogynistic about ripping Sarah Palin apart.
Kristol and Palin and their ilk do not think the way I do, logically and, I hope, cogently. They feel first, and make their minds conform to these basic sensations. I don’t know if it is a defect in their DNA or some glitch in their evolutionary development. It may well lead to some Darwinian disaster like World War III and the end of all of us. Evidently, we are coming to one of those crisis points in our evolutionary history like the development of a larger brain or, in this case, a brain that substitutes faith for science and hope for analysis.
Perhaps, the question really is whether human beings can survive the gods of their darker sides or as CG Jung would have it, can we integrate the shadow with the conscious self? Upon this resolution rests, I think, the future of the species.
Thank you, BooMan.
Allow me to emphasize that Zarqawi, the one-legged magical terrorist man who could be in three places at once, was not connected to Al Qa`eda or bin Laden, and that he considered himself a rival. He was a small-time nearly illiterate thug whose only claim to fame (before Colin Powell introduced him up as the poster boy for the crusade in Iraq) was a couple of very small operations in Jordan, and an unsuccessful visit to try to hook himself up with bin Laden.
My favourite Zarqawi legend, I think, is the one about how, after having been mortally wounded in the abdomen and who knows where else – by brave American troops, of course – he traveled (on one leg, of course) all the way from western Iraq into Iran where he was lovingly nursed back to health, I guess by the very same Shi`as whom he had repeatedly sworn to annihilate.
And then there was the story about how he, former Ba’thist `Izzat Ad Duri, Muqtada Sadr and the Iranian government were all in cahoots against the American liberators and their Iraqi liberatees. Even those of you who know something about all those characters probably cannot fully appreciate how hilarious that is.
But I digress.
Zarqawi was, indeed, largely an elaborate figment of the rich imagination of the well-paid U.S. P.R. team, as was that terrorist group in Kurdistan – forgot the name at the moment – that he supposedly was head of, and that was supposedly all Saddam’s doing, despite the fact that Saddam brutally destroyed “Islamists” who raised their heads in Iraq, and anyway they were completely outside his reach in an area the Americans forbid him to enter. Oh yes, and despite the bleatings of Colin Powell and others, they had no connection to Al Qa`eda. And isn’t it interesting how quickly that group disappeared into the ether as soon as it was more useful to have Zarqawi’s headquarters in Falluja?
As for so-called Al Qa`eda in Iraq, yes indeed, they are largely an invention of the American’s P.R. firms, and in any case Al Qa`eda in Iraq, to the extent that such a thing does exist, is not even a franchise, but a knock-off with no real connection to bin Laden or Al Qa`eda.
In her interview with ABC’s Gibson, Talk Radio Sarah said pretty much the standard wingnut line about Iraq, i.e., we’re fighting for our freedom over there:
PALIN: …Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.
Pretty much all the insurgents in Iraq just want us gone. They don’t give a damn about our freedoms.
Polls show the demonstrable effect Palin’s nomination has had. In very large (sometimes double digit) numbers white women have switched allegiances, professing a new willingness to vote for the McCain ticket over Obama now that Palin has been added. Many known facts would seem to make Palin’s choice unwise. These include known episodes of ill considered, vindictive terminations in her job as mayor of Wasilla. Her hypocrisy in criticizing earmarks despite seeking many earmarks for both Wasilla and Alaska. Her broaching the subject of banning books. Her insistence on rape victims paying for their own evidence kits. Her very public denigration of community organizers as unserious people. Her parading of her family across various campaign stages while decrying Obama’s alleged abuse of her family’s privacy. All these issues and many more are known to these very same white women telling pollsters of their new support for the McCain ticket. If McCain wins it may very well be due to large numbers of white women voting contrary to their best interests or at minimum voting to install a VP having qualities and traits they would never accept in a woman on the Democratic ticket. Yet they flock to the other side of the aisle for Palin? What woman telling a pollster two months ago they were an Obama supporter now sees a totality of qualities in Palin that merits voting Republican in November? Could it be they’re just plain daft? Millions of now reputedly ex-Obama supporters (according to new polls) want abortion outlawed? Want rape victims made responsible for the costs of pre-trial evidence gathering? Want a VP on the lookout for “bad” books in public libraries? Want oil rigs out the back window of every home on an American shoreline? Want global warming shrugged off as a vagary of natural climate rhythms or the will of God? Unfortunately Obama needs these women to get elected. Does the nation need them in our midst while it attempts to adjust and compete economically and militarily with the rest of the planet? How many other critical electoral issues are accorded the same inane consideration by these women before pulling the lever? Maybe we should we invade France because Carla Bruni wears white after Labor Day? This element has to constitute a large net negative on our eventual quality of life.
Don’t forget to ask whether this nation needs a religious fanatic wack job having a 30% probability of becoming President some time in the next 4 years.
“Does the nation need them in our midst while it attempts to adjust and compete economically and militarily with the rest of the planet?“
Does the nation need to compete militarily with the rest of the planet? Isn’t that lust for military dominance the source of most of the world’s woes? I would be delighted if something – anything – prevented this country from competing militarily with the rest of the planet.
I said compete, not dominate. Unless a method is agreed upon wherein everyone simultaneously disarms the U.S. needs at minimum to remain militarily equal to or greater than those having weapons capable of harming us. Don’t conflate lust for dominance with prudent self protection.
I don’t find prudent self-protection to equate to competing. This competition to always have the biggest and best military and the greatest quantity of the most destructive weapons leads inevitably to a need to use them, if only to test out their effectiveness. And if the U.S. didn’t go around using its military so much, there would be little or no threat of attack. When was the last time Sweden was attacked? Norway? Switzerland? Finland? Iceland? Spain? Spain barely even has a military.
When was the last time the United States used its military for anything that could reasonably be called defense? When was the last time it NEEDED its military for anything that could reasonably be called defense?
Hurria, if you insist on a narrow, isolationist definition of military necessity for the U.S. then I’d say an attack on the continental 48 or Alaska/Hawaii would be the only qualifying reasons for military response. Surely you know we reserve the right to act militarily for reasons beyond a direct attack on U.S. soil? Once that is accepted you then enter into debate as to which uses of force are justified or not. That debate takes place before, during and after every engagement, which is a sign of healthy democracy. Are you in favor of narrowing our use of the military, making its activities strictly allowable only in the event of attack on one of the 50 states? If not the difference between competition and self protection is so much splitting of hairs.
Steve, read the United Nations Charter. Every nation member has to sign it.
I notice that you did not answer my questions, so I will repeat them. When was the last time the U.S. military was used for anything remotely resembling defense? When was the last time the American military was needed for anything remotely resembling defense?
PS And you also did not answer these questions:
When was the last time Sweden was attacked? Norway? Switzerland? Finland? Iceland? Spain?
And just for the hell of it, add to that list New Zealand.
Sounds like you’re giving a break to that majority of white men who’ve been in McCain’s column all along.