The Lies Get Old after a While 3
Professor Cole sums it up nicely. Read the entire post. He has what the current Federal Administration lacks: Evidence. Citable evidence.
That’s the difference between searching for truth and searching for truthiness.
But I saw our president taking unseemly advantage of the terror threat. I saw him take short cuts in the law. I saw him repeatedly mischaracterize the facts. I saw him hang pre-existing projects on this new peg. I saw him try to make Americans– always before a proud, free people–live in fear, so as to aggrandize his own power and prevent criticism of his policies. Now members of his cabinet have been so emboldened by their megalomania that they are likening critics of the Iraq War to Hitler-lovers.
Bush did it again on Wednesday. He continues to peddle the Abu Zubayda myth:
(snip)
But the information attributed to Abu Zubayda is that he identified Khalid Shaikh Muhammad’s nickname and gave details helpful in tracking him down. In fact the CIA knew the nickname from August, 2001. And he was captured near Islamabad in the house of a relative of a major Jama’at-i Islami leader based on a tip. The tipster was paid $25 million. When confronted with this, the Bush administration said it was true but that Abu Zubayda’s information was also helpful. But how? If we knew the nickname from other sources, and if we knew the location from a tipster, what value added does Abu Zubayda supply? None. . . .
September 7, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Juan Cole can be kinda weird at times, though. It’s almost like he’s obsessed with trying to soften Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, for instance, despite Ahmadinejad’s persistent efforts to strengthen it. He’s a bit of a spin doc.
September 7, 2006 at 8:35 pm
I don’t know that I would characterize him as a spin doctor. I think he is sincerely trying to report things from a global, rather than a parochial US perspective.
And he does have citable sources.
And Bush lies. That is not a make-up charge. That is well established in the public record.
He lies so much that, frankly, I don’t think he knows truth from lie anymore.
September 7, 2006 at 9:43 pm
I really don’t know what his perspective is, other than that it is his own, obviously. If he is trying to be “global” (whatever that means,) why wouldn’t he hold Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric to the same scrutiny as Bush’s?