Fringe Politics
Jun 24th, 2005 at 5:01 am by Susie
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its “last throes,” says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message - readier than the media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes that we were misled into war, but that “fringe” now comprises much if not most of the population.
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Once the media catch up with the public, we’ll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.
Why do journalists on the left almost always use “mislead” rather than “lied”? Mislead sounds so much more mild. If things were reversed the repukes would always use “lied”. We need to help Joe Public think that Republicans = lies.
The problem is that “these people” own the media…
A great freeway blog:
BUSH + CHENEY = LIES
Krugman has called the Bush Administration liars too. While I am sure that there are comments from his editor about this, it is hard to believe that Krugman gives much ground to the heir to Okrent.
Why “mislead” rather than “lie”?
Because most of the things that are said are sentence fragments and deniable. Bush has apparently never actualy said that Saddam was behind 9/11, he just said the “9/11″ and “Saddam” together over and over until people get the desired impression. Then if you say he lied, he can ask when he ever said it.
But the Downing Street Memo showed that Bush did, in fact, lie when he told Congress that he was going to try for diplomacy.