Someone in the White House finally realized this week that they had been giving the Democrats a perfect campaign issue: the continued subtle hints that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Queda on September 11. The administration has been inserting this supposition into every other sentence for two years, even though it’s not only unsupported by any evidence, it’s completely ludicrous owing to Osama bin Laden’s hatred of Hussein. But hey, it served as a great excuse to invade Iraq, and stuck in the public’s mind in the way that only lies do.
Well, yesterday Donald Rumsfeld sent up the trial balloon for his boss by admitting that there was no evidence of a connection, and today Dubya made it official by saying that there was no evidence of a link. Of course, as usual, this White House – which slammed the Clintons ten ways to Sunday – used Clintonian technical language to get around the pesky fact that they’ve been saying there was a link all along.
Mr Bush did however repeat his belief that the former Iraqi president had ties to al-Qaeda – the group widely regarded as responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington.
See? They say that Hussein was not linked to September 11, but he was linked to al Queda… it’s just semantics. They know that 70% of Americans believe that Hussein was involved, so they’ve accomplished their goal and no longer need to keep pushing the lie.
Well, now they have taken this particular lie off the table for the Democrats, who can no longer push it as a campaign issue. I wonder what other revelations the Bush gang will come up with to keep it off the campaign trail? Oh, wait – Ashcroft is evidently going to disclose how many times they’ve peered into the reading habits of library patrons to show that they’re not abusing civil liberties. Of course, most of the applications of the PATRIOT Act are classified, so he won’t give us THOSE figures, I’m sure.
And another thing: I made this prediction of the Iraq outcome back in April. Now, I’m not a foreign policy expert or anything, but with the recent events in Iraq, do you think that my common sense is somewhat on target? Now that I’ve got almost a year of entries on the blog, it’s interesting to plug in a search term like “Iraq” and read posts from before the war… and see how things ended up.
my buddy at work and I have determined The Shrub psycho-strategy: it matters not WHAT you say as long as you keep repeating it until everyones else believes it. The Iraq-Osama connection is the perfect example.
Earlier this week when I read the first murmurings of The Shrub position change on Iraq-Osama I was screaming at my Mac as I read. It is unbelievable, and the worst part is that few question the claim. (“Its so great Iraq is helping us catch Osama!” “At least Saddam was a GOOD Muslim!”, “Saddam’s that good guy in Jordan. Osama’s still in Baghdad’). I’ve seen only Jon Stewart make counter-arguments. The country should be up in arms calling for impeachment but no one is paying attention — these pathetic Christians care about one thing only — covering up their self-hatred and lust. Luckily for The Shrub Isabel made a weak appearance and Arnold still won’t debate (goddam! Why do thye think he’s an actor? English is his second language! What do they think he can say sans script?).
Enough.