Believe It or Not

Slate ^ | Christopher Hitchens

[hipaatwo]

Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, at 11:46 AM ET

The power to cloud congessmen's minds? Click image to expand.

The power to cloud congessmen's minds? What do you have to believe in order to keep alive your conviction that the Bush administration conspired to launch a lie-based war? As with (I admit) the pro-war case, the ground of argument has a tendency to shift. I saw two examples in Washington last week. An exceptionally moth-eaten and shabby picket line outside Ahmad Chalabi's event on Wednesday featured a man with a placard alleging that Bush had prearranged the 9/11 attacks. I know a number of left and right anti-warriors who have flirted with this possibility but very few who truly believe it. (Even Gore Vidal, who did at one point insinuate the idea, has recently withdrawn it, if only on the grounds of the administration's incompetence.)

But then there is the really superb pedantry and literal-mindedness on which the remainder of the case depends. This achieved something close to an apotheosis on the front page of the Washington Post on Nov. 12, where Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus brought complete gravity to bear. Is it true, as the president claimed in his Veterans Day speech, that Congress saw the same intelligence sources before the war, and is it true that independent commissions have concluded that there was no willful misrepresentation? Top form was reached on the inside page:

[hipaatwo]

Discuss. I'm going to go listen the the Eagles pre-game!

[hipaatwo]

For your list. Hitchens kicks butt.

[Mo1]

PING

[Chuck54]

bttt

[RAY]

Hitchens kicks butt.

Yes, right, but is anybody, besides us, listening?

[ladyinred]

What a travesty this is. Not only do the liberal Democrats apparently want their own congressional votes from 1998 and 2002 back. It sometimes seems that they are actually nostalgic for the same period, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and there were no coalition soldiers to challenge his rule, and when therefore by definition there was peace, and thus things were more or less OK. Their current claim to have been fooled or deceived makes them out, on their own account, to be highly dumb and gullible. But as dumb and gullible as that?

Indeed!

[ladyinred]

Who besides us is listening? That is the question that troubles me. I can say that those I know are not. They couldn't care any less in fact. If you ask them they will say Bush lied about why we went to war. That is what they listened to and believed. Beyond that, pass the Budweiser.

[tje]

good as usual.. thanks for posting...

[sgtbono2002]

The idiots that are claiming Bush lied to get us in the war are the same fools who called his Presidency illigitimate.

Lying scumbags.

[Stentor]

Bump for later.

[Lee'sGhost]

I was discussing this with a lib and gave him a list of all the Dims who voted for the war. He, of course, just ignored the facts and continued on saying that Bush lied "and that's all there is to it."

Why confuse yourself with facts.

[billhilly]

"Yes, right, but is anybody, besides us, listening?"

If you listen to Hitchens' detractors, they would say his bartender, but drunk or sober, left or right, he is one of the best writers and thinkers in this country.

[Peach]

This paragraph is a thing of beauty:

Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the "shocked, shocked" faction, we already know who you are.

[nopardons]

Thanks for the ping; very interesting article.

[RAY]

Who besides us is listening? That is the question that troubles me. I can say that those I know are not. They couldn't care any less in fact. If you ask them they will say Bush lied about why we went to war. That is what they listened to and believed. Beyond that, pass the Budweiser.

Thanks for your comments. Your bio states central California - we lived in Bakersfield for 5 years and presently live in Texas. A fair number of my friends in Bakersfield were also conservative - Bush supporters.

By the way, it is nice to have a pretty lady in red on our side!

[dervish]

"Hitchens kicks butt"

Specifically Dana Milbank's butt.

[Roscoe Karns]

bump

A.M-- could you possibly add "Hitchens" to the title? That way more people will read this great article.

[prairiebreeze]

We did not know and could not know, until after the invasion, of Saddam's plan to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from Pyongyang, or of the centrifuge components buried on the property of his chief scientist, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi. The Duelfer report disclosed large latent facilities that were only waiting for the collapse of sanctions to resume activity.

Nothing of what was found (and I still believe most of it was moved or buried) was ever acknowleged by our lying media. Nothing.

[stylin_geek]

To take your thought one step closer, who would you prefer to listen to? A drunk Christopher Hitchens or a sober Ted Kennedy?

[billhilly]

"sober Ted Kennedy?"

Is that possible? It would probably take years to sober up If he quit right now.