Saturday, November 12

Commentary - updated

Originally written 11/10 2:58PM
Norman Podhoretz:

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

Emphasis mine. Via Keith Devens

I don't get it. I'm sorry. "the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate" have been coming from the pro-war side. I don't doubt that there haven't been some of the same things going on the other side of the debate, but the vast majority of the crap that is out there is from the pro-war side. That may be a subjective observation, but if it is, it's just as subjective as Norman Podhoretz's.

The problem I have is that there has been zero proof that anything that W said was actually true. No WMD, nothing to even hint that Iraq had any kind of weapons program on that would be worrisome to little ole US.

The first straw man is "Scooter" Libby and his indictment. The quote from the article by Patrick Fitzgerald is:

[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

Of course the indictment is not about the war. Just like Martha Stewart was indicted and convicted of not insider trading, but lying. The trouble I have with this issue, aside from the talking heads talking about this as if outing a secret agent is just politics (clue stick 8x8: It's not!) With the IRS warning a church about losing it's tax free status over an anti-war sermon, and hearing that war protesters are not "patriotic" (scare quotes used delibrately), this shows me a pattern that I don't like.

Off to pick up the kids. Maybe more on this later.

Update 11/12 1:30PM
I'm updating the date/time to move this up some.

I wanted to write more, but I find out that I don't have.

This is turning into a shitstorm. And I predict that it's going to come out badly for W.

Kash at Angry Bear comes out talking about the difference between how the NY Times and the Washington Post handle's the President's speech of 11/11/2005. He gives props to the Post for at least putting some critical thinking into the article.

Meanwhile (via Legal Fiction) Glenn Reynolds tries vainly to toe the President's line, which ends up needing a response wherein he tries to backpedal some, but still can't get the logic right. I think publius of Legal Fiction has a great analysis.

The Blogging of the President has a nice pair of articles that are in relation to the President's speech.

John Cole tries to bash Kevin Drum for supposedly take a quote from Glenn Reynolds out of context.

At any rate, the reason I write this is because of this thoroughly disingenuous post by Kevin Drum:
THE LAST REFUGE…Glenn Reynolds on Democrats who claim that George Bush misled us into war:
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically.
Glad we got that out in open.

Of course, the intent is to portray Glenn as stating that anyone who believes that we were misled into war is unpatriotic, and if you were to just look at that statement, it would be a fair interpretation. But in order to get to that little quote, you have to, as Kevin has chosen, selectively and intentionally ignore the rest of Glenn's comment (conveniently missing the entire point of the statement):
BUSH SLAMS HISTORICAL REVISIONISTS ON THE WAR: About time. Jeff Goldstein has more.
And read earlier posts on this subject here and here. Also here.
The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way—and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically.

There is, as you can see, a big difference.

Sorry, but there isn't a difference. At currently 254 comments (I don't even want to think what would happen if I had that many with this current setup!), from what I'm scanning, most people are disagree with John as well. Just noticed this:

Note to potential commenters—If all you are going to do is launch a vicious or pointed attack at Glenn, Jeff, Kevin, or me, don't bother. I will just delete it and end comments on this post.

Nice way to encourage talk.

While I'm sure that Glenn Reynolds is a nice guy, especially in person, the fact of the matter is that since I've gotten started reading Bloglines, I've been reading Instapundit, and Glenn shows no compunction whatsoever in putting his foot in his mouth. But he will chew it completely off instead of admitting that anything he has written is wrong. In the Myers-Briggs Temperment Indicator, that's pretty much showing 100% J. I've raised one of those. Talk about turdheads.

I'll leave you with Matthew Yglesias' report on the matter.