Paul, wipe your mouth

I rarely read Paul Krugman because he’s so irredeemably biased that every article he pens is addled by intellectual dishonesty. He really lathers on the mouth-froth this morning with a piece titled “Standard Operational Procedure.” It’s truly a masterpiece of revisionist history, selective memory, leftist spinning, and moral vanity.

The mystery of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has become a lot less mysterious. Recent reports in major British newspapers and three major American news magazines, based on leaks from angry intelligence officials, back up the sources who told my colleague Nicholas Kristof that the Bush administration "grossly manipulated intelligence" about W.M.D.'s.

The New York Times is not only the paper of invented stories and abused stringers; it’s the paper of supreme petulance. Operation Enduring Freedom wasn’t more than a couple weeks old when the NYT rolled out the “quagmire” terminology. Now we’re searching a country the size of California for weapons that might fit into a file cabinet (e.g. anthrax) and the NYT can’t wait.

And anyone who talks about an "intelligence failure" is missing the point. The problem lay not with intelligence professionals, but with the Bush and Blair administrations. They wanted a war, so they demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence.

In the history of warfare, has there ever been a more helpful enemy than Saddam Hussein? His defiance of U.N. resolutions, the slow roll-out of information, and hindrance of U.N. inspectors damned him before the world audience. The U.S. didn’t want this war; it was leftover business from previous administrations and couldn’t be ignored any longer in the wake of 9/11. Hussein’s conspicuous refusal to cooperate made it all the easier for the public to support action.

That said, why did Hussein act like he was hiding something? Could it be – now just take this as a wild possibility, Paul – that maybe he DID have weapons of mass destruction? The Economist employs Occam’s Razor and concludes as much:

One possibility is that, contrary to intelligence reports, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. If so, why did Iraq behave so guiltily? Several explanations have been offered, all of them unsatisfactory. One is that Saddam could not bear to submit fully to the UN, for the loss of face. Another theory is that he sought to create a sense of ambiguity over WMD—intimidating his enemies, while denying them the evidence to prove his guilt conclusively. If so, his calculations backfired catastrophically.

The likeliest explanation is that Saddam did have some sort of WMD programme. It may have been of the “just-in-time” variety, as some have suggested, which would explain the lack of stocks. He could also have destroyed his weapons before the war. But it is also possible that there are still WMD in Iraq.

End Economist quote...back to Krugmania.

In Britain, the news media have not been shy about drawing the obvious implications, and the outrage has not been limited to war opponents. The Times of London was ardently pro-war; nonetheless, it ran an analysis under the headline "Lie Another Day." The paper drew parallels between the selling of the war and other misleading claims: "The government is seen as having `spun' the threat from Saddam's weapons just as it spins everything else."
Yet few have made the same argument in this country, even though "spin" is far too mild a word for what the Bush administration does, all the time. Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.
Am I exaggerating?

Yes, extravagantly so. Next question.

Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have "found the weapons of mass destruction," 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. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes.

Paul, Paul, Paul. You can’t seriously be making this argument. You know perfectly well that Bush, the RNC, and everyone with half a lobe understands that we mean income taxes. And people in the lower income levels who don’t pay income taxes can’t get a tax credit on taxes they don’t pay. Those people do pay sales taxes and payroll taxes – should we roll those back also?

And the bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy?

Here’s that old liberal saw that the “American people have been duped!” If only we were as perceptive as Paul Krugman we could see through this tissue of lies!

I think Krugman’s problem is that the administration has been far too straightforward and his brain has been unable to process the information after years of atrophy during the Clinton Administration. Speaking of which, here are some statements on Iraq from that storied era of truth, honesty, and moral righteousness.

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

Tee-hee. Belittling the prima facie fact of a liberal media is the last refuge of the liberal media.

If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we're in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent — who supported Britain's participation in the war — writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks."
It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. 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. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.

Sweet mercy, get a grip Paul. The “worst scandal” in American history? Please. Strange how you left out the Gulf of Tonkin and Clinton’s bombing of an aspirin factory in the Sudan. Oh, right, those are Democratic scandals. Were you “deceived” into overlooking the “uncomfortable possibility” that your bias made you forget those? If you’re such a great actuary of the truth, where was your outrage when Clinton was lobbing cruise missiles into Afghanistan?

But here's the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a "khaki election" next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.

I beg of you, Paul, make this an issue in the 2004 elections. Shout it from the rooftops. See if you can get some of the Democratic candidates involved. Tell the two-thirds of Americans who don’t believe they were misled by the Bush Administration that they’re foggy-topped rubes. Save us from the corruption of the Republicans – it’s up to you!