Where things can get pretty igry ...Rick's Cafe Americain

OK, I’m being uncharitable.  But although some of the blame goes to the media, and most of it goes to an Administration that has betrayed our trust time and again, these people have got to take some responsibility.  After all, if you’re going to participate in a participatory democracy, you’ve got to be paying attention.

Perhaps the most stunning example of what has recently become known ‘round these parts as “dumbness” is a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll indicating that a startling 42% of those surveyed thought Saddam Hussein was involved with the 9/11 attacks. 32% thought Saddam had personally planned them.  How can that many people possibly think that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11?  Well, there is no easy answer, but it is clear to me that this is in large part due to the fact that we have a lazy/biased mainstream media that is almost completely seconded to a partisan machine that uses the mainstream media as its own propaganda tool against people too tired, lazy, or uneducated to realize they are being bamboozled.

While 42% of those surveyed thought there was a Saddam-9/11 link, 62% of Republicans believed Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Why so many?  It think it is a combination of (a) greater willingness to suspend disbelief in the name of “loyalty” (I promise, I won’t use the word “fascism”. Oops.) and (b) greater voluntary exposure to the most biased media outlets.  Still, what does it take to wake these people up?

In September of 2003, President Bush conceded that there was no evidence of a Saddam-9/11 connection.  Since Republicans seem to believe the most blatantly obvious untruths that issue forth from W’s lips, why don’t they seem to have believed this?  Could be because in September of 2003 Dick Cheney was going around calling Iraq “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9-11,” and saying that while he was not aware of any evidence supporting a 9-11/Saddam link shortly after the 9-11 attacks:

Subsequent to that, we have learned a couple of things.  We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the ‘90s; that it involved training, for example, on BW (biological warfare) and CW (chemical warfare)—that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems, and involved the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization.

But what about now?  I mean, the 9-11 Commission reported in June that there was no evidence of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda.  And Cheney admitted that “We have never been able to prove that there was a connection.” Now, surely that was difficult for Cheney to admit, given that he had been repeatedly telling the country that there was “overwhelming evidence" of an Iraq-9/11 connection.  But I won’t call it a flip-flop.  It’s more of a flip-flop-flip-flop-flip . . .

You see, Cheney was also still telling everyone that Saddam had “long-established ties with al Qaeda.” In case you’re confused (I don’t blame you), Cheney claims to have been making the subtle distinction (in his own mind, anyway) between a Saddam-9/11 link (no evidence) and an Iraq-al Qaeda link ("we don’t know” - but depending on how vague you want to get . . say, some al Qaeda guy may or may not have been in Iraq before or after Saddam was deposed . . . there might be some “connection").  This is precisely the sort of subtlety the Republicans have been attacking as “inconsistency” in Kerry.  Worse, it seems that the Administration has consistently gone out of its way to intentionally blur lines it tries to pretend are clear—on an issue that is of the utmost importance to America and to the world.

Most recently, for example, Rumsfeld stated he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda.  Surely, this is inconsistent with the administration’s earlier claims that there was “overwhelming evidence” of such a connection, yes?  No.  Apparently, we “imminent" threat of Iraqi WMDs.  Of course, the threat was not imminent before it was imminent. 

Confused again?  Well, you see, in 2001, just prior to 9/11, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice both stated that Saddam Hussein was not a serious threat to the US or even to his neighbors.  Then, immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration told us we had to invade Iraq because saddam had WMD’s.  Yesterday, we learned what Powell, Rice and, well, pretty much everyone but the Dittoheads, knew all along: there were no WMDs.  But this morning Cheney proclaimed that the proof that Saddam had no WMD’s justifies the invasion of Iraq.

For those of you keeping track, that’s flip, flop, flip, belly-flop.