What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.


By Elton Beard

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide people into two kinds and those who don't. I don't.


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ARCHIVE ARCHIVE ARCHIVE

Sunday, August 31, 2003
5:00 PM PT

George F. Will's Fractured Facts.

In today's Washington Post, Mr. Will writes about Gen. Wesley Clark:

As Clark crisscrosses the country listening for a clamor for him ("I expect to have my decision made by Sept. 19," when he visits Iowa -- feel the suspense), he compounds the confusion that began when he said on June 15 that on 9/11 "I got a call at my home" saying that when he was to appear on CNN, "You've got to say this is connected" to Iraq. "It came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over." But who exactly called Clark?
The clear implication from this sequence of quotations is that Clark reported getting a call at home, asking him to connect Iraq to 9/11, and "it came from the White House". This is a setup for the accusation that Clark subsequently contradicted himself on facts, as Will follows up with this later quote from Clark:
July 18: "No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11."
But did Clark really say that he was called from the White House? Here is the relevant snippet of the June 15 2003 Meet The Press:
GEN. CLARK: ...there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.

MR. RUSSERT: By who? Who did that?

GEN. CLARK: Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, "You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein."

Note how Will omits the prelude, and slyly re-orders fragments of Clark's statements to give a false impression. When Clark said "it came from the White House... it came from all over", he was clearly answering Russert's follow-up about the "concerted effort ...". Only subsequently, contrary to the impression conveyed by Will's disordered account, did Clark mention the call he got at home on 9/11. And he neither stated nor implied that it came from the White House.

George Will distorts quotations from Wesley Clark to convey an impression that diverges from the truth. Based largely on that, he proceeds to label Gen. Clark "deranged". What's a proper label for Mr. Will?

Update: From uggabugga's proprietor comes note of The Weekly Standard pushing a similar canard earlier, and an effective refutation at The Daily Brew (August 28).

Update II: More on Will's hit piece at Nitpicker.

Thursday, August 28, 2003
3:00 PM PT

Shorter Jack Shafer:
Liar, Liar

  • Accurate depictions of systemic duplicity on the part of one's ideological opponents, if lacking concurrent acknowledgment that failures of honesty have occurred on one's own side, degrade the discourse as much as do false accusations of mendacity.

Also see Nitpicker.

Shorter schema originated by D-Squared, who is now found mostly at Crooked Timber.

Update: The incomparable Daily Howler weighs in as well (scroll down).

Wednesday, August 27, 2003
9:00 AM PT

Shorter Alan Dershowitz:
Terror Stings Its Pal, the U.N.

  • The U.N. is objectively pro-terrorist.

In his own words:
Now the chickens have come home to roost. Some Iraqis, who feel that they are now occupied, have taken the U.N.'s message to heart and are engaged in a "national liberation movement" of the kind long praised by the U.N. and are using the tactics rewarded by the U.N. against that very organization.
Those silly Iraqis! Why on earth would they feel occupied?

Monday, August 25, 2003
1:00 PM PT

Shorter Michael McFaul:
Wrong Time to 'Stay the Course'

  • The imposition of democracy on the greater Middle East is a grand project lacking only a practicable strategy.

Home


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Busy, busy, busy.

What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.


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