Ok, here is a start to that assignment... imminent threat, kiddie credits and tax breaks..
******************************
Krugman stated,
The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history, worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra.
This reminds one of his January 29, 2002, column, written back when the Enron zone was being flooded by the Times. Was he exaggerating when he wrote,
I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.
Looks like a pattern. But lets judge his latest dance with the gods of hyperbole.
Was Bush lying when he told the public that Saddam Hussein was an "imminent threat", Krugman Truth Squad member David Hogberg said "no" on his blog, Cornfield Commentary. Bush, it seems, never said it!
I did some checking and found the text of the President's most recent State of the Union address. Here's the exact quote regarding the "imminent" threat:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
... I did find news articles claiming Bush was saying the Iraqi threat was imminent. For example, one article referred to the State of the Union speech, while another referred to an October 7th address. But ... Bush didn?t say the Iraqi threat was imminent in the State of the Union. And Bush never used the term in the October 7th address. The same held true for Bush's speech last year to the United Nations, his speech/press conference of March 6th, and his speech as the war was beginning. Either Bush didn't use the word "imminent," or he used the word to argue that we should not wait until the threat is imminent.
Krugman Truth Squad member Robert Musil went further on his blog, Man Without Qualities:
... during the entire United Nations dust-up it was always quite clear that the United States was not arguing that Iraq needed to pose "an imminent threat" in the meaning of that term in international law for its invasion to be justified. ... In fact, much of the public debate over the emerging "Bush Doctrine" concerned whether the United States was constrained by arguably out-of-date notions of "imminent threat" ... the Administration and Secretary Powell did not argue that Iraq was imminently threatening to use those weapons. That's what the Administration's opponents claimed the Administration had to show. Had Herr Doktorprofessor ... perhaps drunk too much iced tea and left the room while all this was going on?
Krugman Truth Squad senior member James Taranto, on his blog Best of the Web Today, called this Krugman op-ed "an unusually deranged column even by his standards." And then he got right to the heart of the matter ? the Times and the Left are simply out to discredit the president, and they are flooding-the-zone to do so:
... President Bush would have to be judged one of the more honest politicians of our time. He's untouched by scandal, and he keeps his promises. He said he'd cut taxes, and he did. He vowed to liberate Iraq, and he did. But now an argument is developing on the Democratic left that somehow the policies themselves are corrupt, that because Bush doesn't agree with liberal ideas, he is a liar.
In his latest column, Krugman also touched on last week's New York Times zone-flooder, the refundable "kiddie credit" that was downsized in Bush's tax bill. Krugman wrote,
... the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. You've heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo.
As I pointed out on my blog, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid, that was no "last-minute switcheroo." Senate Finance Committee chair Charles Grassley explained last week:
The change reported in [Thursday's] New York Times was not a last-minute revision. The accelerated refundable child tax credit was not in the President,s original proposal, and it was not in the bill passed by the House of Representatives.
Of course the Times never ran a correction. And where does Krugman get the idea that there are eight million tax-paying children in America who deserve a "tax break"? The "kiddie credit" that was scaled back in the tax bill is no "tax break," and it's not what the RNC was referring to. It's simply a government payment, something also known as a welfare check, that just happens to be administered by the Internal Revenue Service.
**************************************
Oh yeah, that was from the original post which we were supposedly discussing...
You must have been flailing already - almost suceeded in changing the topic. |
