McClatchy: Bush Wrong to Blame Iraq Woes Mainly on Al-Qaeda
NEW YORK For the past week, E&P has noted the Bush administration’s rising use of blaming much of the insurgency in Iraq on al-Qaeda operatives. Some news outlets have gone all along with this, others not. We pointed out that McClatchy Newspapers seemed to be questioning this trend.”We cannot attribute all the violence in Iraq to al Qaida,” retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq before becoming an opponent of Bush’s strategy there, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. “Al Qaida is certainly a component, but there’s larger components.”
Today McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, in a report from Washington, threw more cold water on this. His article opened as follows.
Facing eroding support for his Iraq policy, even among Republicans, President Bush on Thursday called al Qaida “the main enemy” in Iraq, an assertion rejected by his administration’s senior intelligence analysts.
The reference, in a major speech at the Naval War College that referred to al Qaida at least 27 times, seemed calculated to use lingering outrage over the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to bolster support for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, despite evidence that sending more troops hasn’t reduced the violence or sped Iraqi government action on key issues.
It amazes me how this simple-minded ploy – repeating something over and over again in order to make it easier to believe – works so well. The Big Lie is still a powerful tool, and so is the Little Myth, as long as it’s repeated endlessly.
Paul Krugman mentioned in passing while discussing Rupert Murdoch’s bid to take over the Wall Street Journal:
60 percent of Americans believed at least one of the following: clear evidence had been found of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda; W.M.D. had been found in Iraq; world public opinion favored the U.S. going to war with Iraq.
The prevalence of these misperceptions, however, depended crucially on where people got their news. Only 23 percent of those who got their information mainly from PBS or NPR believed any of these untrue things, but the number was 80 percent among those relying primarily on Fox News.
Actually, I’m kind of surprised about that 23 percent of NPR listeners, as an old-timer myself.
But anyway, Mythbusting Al Qaeda in Iraq is simple enough; keep repeating the truth to those who might listen. Kind of like repeating “there is no spoon” to yourself endlessly. It’s mostly illusion, smoke and mirrors. Sure, there is an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, but not to the extent Bush and Company so obviously want us to think — and they for damn sure want to justify the Iraq war any way they can, because they’re incapable of admitting they were wrong.
The entire Krugman article can be read (with some difficulty) here, but it’s easier read in a newsreader due to the background and font colors.
[tags]Iraq, Al Qaeda, myth, Big Lie, Paul Krugman, there is no spoon[/tags]