No matter how low you’ve sunk, you can always keep digging
The Wall Street Journal offers this dead horse for your consideration today:
There is also his–let’s be kind–mercurial temperament. Mr. Dean often shoots from the lip, a habit his supporters find refreshing but that will make him vulnerable during the crucible of a campaign. To take just one example: In the wake of Saddam Hussein’s capture, Mr. Dean declared we were no safer because of it. This was bad enough as a gaffe, but he has stuck by the point, like Mike Dukakis on furloughs for felons, suggesting an obstinate disregard for the judgment of most Americans.
This has been noted so many times by so many people it’s hard sadly all too easy to believe the WSJ is pulling this bunny dead horse out of its hat ass:
Newsweek: “A majority (51 percent) of Americans say Hussein’s capture hasn’t made them safer or more secure (41 percent say it has)…”
CBS: “AFTER SADDAM’S CAPTURE, THE TERROR THREAT IS??
Increased: 17%; Still the same: 61%; Decreased: 18%.”
Have you no shame sirs? No shame at all? (Our December post on this here, Atrios’ there.)
Hey, when you produce as ridiculous a blog as Taranto’s “Best” of the Web, lying’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
And John Glenn hates America, too.
opinionjournal@wsj.com
Shorter Peanut: Hey fuckwad, check your facts.
(Actual letter phrased with perfectly ladylike, librarianish virtue, yet cock-friendliness, that would pass even Amber Pawlik’s tough standards for yoking two such different beasts.)
And of course Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge did raise the threat level to orange a week or so after Saddam’s capture. Reports at the time were that Ridge did so after consultation with (and agreement by) Ashcroft and others, and that Ridge et al. thought we were in greater danger than at any time since September 11. So it seems Dean was by no means the only one snookered into believing that Saddam’s capture didn’t make us safer. Indeed, Ridge’s actions indicate that he and others thought we had become less safe.
Funny, I must have missed the memo stating that all Democratic candidates must conform to public opinion, otherwise they’ve committed a “gaffe.” Or the other one stating that when the public disagrees with the WSJ, the latter is permitted to rectify their error.
He was hiding in a hole when we caught him, for crying out loud–how could catching him make us safer? There’s no evidence to support the fantasy that he was running the Iraqi guerrilla war effort from his hole–and given Saddam’s disasterous record as a general, even then capturing him would only debatably make us safer.
There is still life to the back story of the Kurds holding Saddam until they could make a deal with the U.S. for power/ransom money/ whatever and then turning him over to the Americans for the great photo-op of his cowering in his hidey hole.
Since when should an opinion about our safety be informed by pollsters, anyway? What the hell does “the judgement of most Americans” have to do with it?
The WSJ is totally out to lunch on this one.
This is yet another indication that the corporate power structure (which the WSJ represents) is at war with us. They want total Republican control of the country so their corporations can make money for their rich stockholders without interference from pesky citizens.
This was an attempt to tarnish the likely “Democratic” challenger to Bush. It shows that even the corporate “Democrats” aren’t anti-democracy or pro-corporate enough for them.
Truth doesn’t matter to them. Their goal is the elimination of obstacles to profits, such as the “Democratic” Party, the Bill of Rights, unions, the United Nations, etc… To them, the end justifies the means.
The reference to the statement once directed towards Joe McCarthy is particularly apt. It was, after all, the mainstream corporate press (with precious few individual exceptions) that propped up and promoted McCarthy’s witch hunts. And that very same partisan character describes the press today.
The bottom-line question of the 2004 campaign is mainly whether the press chooses to act more like Walter Winchell, as he reacted to Joe McCarthy (cheering him on) or like Ed Murrow.
Does no one remember the reaction of Bush himself (pretty much: “this does not mean an end to terror”)?! They are literally attacking Dean for holding the exact same position their Fuehrer holds! Why is no one reporting Bush’s tempramental lip-shooting, like the French press conference when he attacked a member of the press for being bilingual (“thinks he’s Mr. International”)?