I got a good chuckle out of the title Duncan Black/Atrios used the other day for a link to FreeRepublic.com where the Freepers were in shock over news that Mel Gibson had said something nice about Michael Moore: When Freepi Explode 01/10/05.
To get a (family-friendly) visual of what that might look like, check out Tom Tomorrow's Inside the Spin Machine (12/28/04).
One of our AOL-J'ers, RepublicanJen, is having a bit of a struggle herself, it seems, with the news that we've stopped even pretending to look for WMDs in Iraq. : No WMDs, they say? 01/13/05. Well, RepJen isn't buying that, no sir-ree:
When I heard the mainstream media reporting that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and they were calling off the search, I nearly spilled my coffee. No WMDs??? Complete and utter b.s.
I guess they forgot about the two tons of uranium, ten to twelve tons of sarin and mustard gases and the multiple reports of non-armed nuclear missile warheads that I remember reading about.
Well, shoot, if she read about it somewhere before, it must have been true! So she knows not to believe it now when she reads about no WMDs being found. Of course, she must have some way of knowing that what she read before is better than what she's read now. How could that be? No, I don't think I can get into that mental loop right now. Unless I have a strong dose of Oxycontin. But I need to be able to concentrate at my day job, so I'll have to pass on that.
But I think we should try to help RepJen out on this. You know, come up with some alternative explanations that don't have to rely on the notion of the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press! being in cahoots with the Bush administration's weapons inspectors to conceal The Truth.
So, after a long conversation with all the staff here at Old Hickory's Weblog, we've come up with a possible alternative idea. We think it can explain the facts without the need for chemical assistance. Let's consider that whatever it was that RepJen read before, about those humongous stores of WMDs in Iraq that Saddam was just waiting to give to his pal Bin Ladin at the earliest possible moment, maybe what she was reading was just a big pile of horsey poop!
See, kids, it's true: Imagination, the Anti-Drug. You don't need hillbilly heroin to come up with creative ideas!
But for something like the following, you probably need divine inspiration or something:
Oh, excuse me, they didn't find armed nuclear warheads? Did you really believe that the mobile weapons labs were a figment of Colin Powell's imagination? Did you really believe that 13 months was a 'rush to war' and would not give Hussein enough time to move said mobile weapons lab to another country? Would you believe a man who murdered and tortured thousands of his own people, invaded Kuwait and believed in the complete 'arabization' of the world if he told you he had no nuclear weapons?
Only a True Believer could come up with something like this. How, how, how does one receive suchs flashes of perception from on high? I'm assuming that it involves squeezing your ideas tightly shut and bobbling you head up and down for long periods of time while chanting, "There is one God, and George Bush is his Prophet." Or maybe she got the idea from Chuckie, because Chuckie still believes.
For those of us still entangled in the web of this earthly existence and caught up in, you know, reality-based stuff, it kinda sorta looks different. We've been occupying the entire country for nearly two years now. We installed a new government. We've been holding the old regime's scientists prisoner for most of that time, presumably treating them to "waterboarding" or other Rumsfeldian amusements in the gulag. Heck, we've even had Saddam Hussein himself for over a year now. Surely he would now where the stuff was if anybody did!
And nothing's turned up. Nichts. Nada. Bumpkiss. I admit to having a weakness for the theory that leprechauns are hiding the WMDs using a magic invisibility dust. But otherwise, it looks to us unenlighted ones that this all probably means there ain't no WMDs there!
9 comments:
It is really very disappointing to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient to overcome the partisan loyalties of Republicans. All their critical faculties and reasoning powers are directed outward and in the attack mode. Is it a habit of mind developed and nurtured when they were in the minority? Or is it perhaps a reflection of the attack mode "journalism" that they seem to admire (Coulter, Limbaugh, Fox etc)? Is it rooted in an uncritical style of thought common to the religious faith that seems to provide the underpinning for their political activity?
Whatever the explanation, even the fact that Bush is giving up the hunt for WMD does not in any way diminish their belief that the weapons are actually there, or in a neighboring country.
David Kay believed he would find WMD when he started the search, but he came to the realization that weapons inspections had accomplished the task of disarming Saddam, and that Saddam had not even tried to rebuild in the years that followed the imposition of inspections.
Charles Duelfer has confirmed this assessment.
The Senate Intelligence Committee and President Bush have agreed that the intelligence was wrong (though the question of Cheney and Rumsfeld's role in the shaping of the intelligence has yet to be discussed).
All of this is in the open and on the record.
But still there are Bush supporters insisting there were WMD's and Saddam moved them in the weeks before the war.
How can democracy survive such ignorance and negligent citizenship?
Neil
One commenter has taken to dropping by only to make obscene slurs at others who leave comments. I delete that kind of comment, as I've done here. - Bruce
Neil, I also wonder when they write stuff like RepJen's post if they realize that for things to be the way they think - a massive cover-up of WMDs in Iraq - that Bush and Rummy would have to be in on the conspiracy too. That's what reminded me of the Tom Tomorrow cartoon. Some things are (almost!) too much of a stretch even for Freepers. - Bruce
Yep some people are still in denial. Hard to believe. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 anyways. How many times has that been established? Hardly anything was found...and there will not be anything found for WMD.
I like Jen. She is real people. Even though I think she is deluded, I have to admit I like her. I thnk the real question is how to reach good people like Jen. I am at a loss, but I want to try.
Neil
I don't know, Neil. You might need to file that under Lost Cause.
But I do give her credit for informing her blog readers about the story of the alleged antiwar activist assaulting an off-duty serviceman really turned out. Most of the Freepers who spread that story around I'm sure didn't bother to pass on that it was really another veteran and they were arguing like a couple of testosterone-OD's young guys are known to do about whose unit was the toughest.
But actually the WMD thing is a much bigger whopper, and she's sticking with that even if it means implying that Bush the Liberator of People and Rummy the Hooder of the Unrighteous were in a conspiracy with the Liberal Press to cover this whole thing up.
My adaptation of that Bill Moyers quote is becoming my new mantra: the delusional has become mainstream. - Bruce
True believers: uhm, hello??? Even W. doesn't defend the existence of WMDs anymore. He falls on "the intelligence is faulty" gambit and "the world is better off with Hussein out of power". So snap out of it.
Btw, I did see that funny Freepi reference on Atrios. Got a chuckle from me, as I imagined simultaneous combustion all over freeperland!
ah bruce, i've been away from your journal for far too long. for quite some time now i've been almost unable to read commentary on current events. i'm reading newsblogs, keeping up -as best i can- with what's happening, but reading intelligent commentary is almost more than i can bear. my own commentary is running 24/7 through my brain, and my mental health is fragile at the best of times. you have given me a good laugh here, and that's exactly what i need. it's really all we can do, sometimes. the alternative is banging our heads with bricks. i'm going to read on through your journal, although catching up on two months worth of unread entries might truly fry my circuits. i'll be a daily visitor from now on, or at least several times weekly. i hope you will also return to my journal - i have pulled myself together, at last.
journals.aol.com/marigolds2/thewindmillsofmymind
Glad you're "back in action", Mari! - Bruce
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