The GOP's Favorite Rumor
Plus--Dan Rather's bad heir day.
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Friday, June 18, 2004, at 2:01 AM PT
Rather's Heir: Vice-President Cheney is angry with the New York Times for its treatment of the 9/11 Commission report, but CBS' John Roberts beat them to it with what seemed to me a textbook-quality tendentious anti-Bush interpretation the night before. Especially these passages:
ROBERTS: It is one of President Bush's last surviving justifications for war in Iraq, and today, it took a devastating hit when the 9-11 Commission declared there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. ... [snip]
ROBERTS: Those repeated associations left the majority of Americans believing Saddam was involved in 9/11, but the commission today put the nail in that connection, or for that matter, any other al-Qaida acts of terror against America, declaring, 'There is no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.'** The report is yet another blow to the president's credibility as he struggles to find the exit door in Iraq and opens him up to new criticism on the wisdom of taking on Saddam with al-Qaida's leadership still at large. [Emph. added]
Roberts' first sentence alone is fairly egregious. Whatever you think of the Iraq War, there are several justifications that survive even an extreme interpretation of the 9/11 Commission report on Saddam and Al Qaeda. For one, the human rights justification; For another, the idea that the status quo in the Middle East wasn't working in our favor, and we needed to set up a new, more democratic dynamic. For a third, the idea that Saddam may not have had stockpiles of WMDs, but he acted as if he did, in violation of U.N. demands, and we had to call his bluff and find out. I'm not sure these arguments added up to a prudential case for war, but haven't they long since surpassed the disputed Saddam/Osama connection as the Bush administration's surviving justifications? Over to you, Brent Bozell. ... **P.S.: I listened to a lot of press coverage and didn't hear much about that key qualifying phrase--"on attacks against the United States." ...
Q.: If you were a mischievous Bush person and wanted to make some trouble for John Kerry, what would you do? A.: Start a rumor that Kerry has picked John Edwards as his running mate. That will ratchet up the current press buzz that Edwards is the inevitable, obvious choice, due to his charismatic brilliance as a campaigner. Then, if Kerry doesn't want to choose Edwards, he will a) be faced with annoying unwanted pressure and b) look like a vain man who doesn't want to be upstaged. If Edwards is the pick, then a) the pre-emptive rumor will blow the big surprise of Kerry's announcement and b) Kerry will look like he's been stampeded. It's win win! And it won't be a hard rumor to start. ... slate.msn.com |
