You think Zoltan's explanation of the death camp matter is satisfactory, I think it's another case of the influence of motivation on perception, which this set of exchanges has been a cornucopia of. I take it you did not read my response to Zoltan's "perfectly lucid response." BTW, "lucid" does not mean sensible, it can as well mean clear but foolish.:
Okay... it was just a problem with the Israelis's English. In
fact all the instances of Reagan's fabulating were
misspeaking, fatigue, or problems with his listeners English.
*cough*
"[Lou] Cannon wrote a retrospective account of the whole
sequence in the Post, wondering how such intelligent men as
Wiesenthal and Shamir could, on two separate occasions
and independently of each other, take an unexceptional
story (who has not seen films of the death camps) and
imagine an identical elaboration of it."
Garry Wills p 169
(The elaboration being the statement they reported Reagan
making, on these two occasions, to two different individuals,
that he had been assigned, as part of his war duties, to the
filming of Nazi death camps for the Signal Corps.)
A third witness to the statements, Rabbi Hier, who had
been with Wiesenthal, was later convinced by "callers from
the White House" that what Reagan had MEANT was that
he had seen Signal Corps films while in the service... Rabi
Hier told Cannon that Reagan may have fallen into
"rhetorical excess." |
