Missing the Direction
By Anthony Wade
I recognize that this Administration lies so much, that they must have a difficult time distinguishing the truth from their fallacies so I will continue to point out the disinformation.
ABC News's The Note reports: "Communications Director Dan Bartlett was asked by Diane Sawyer whether he intended to see the movie (Fahrenheit 911). After comparing the fiction level of it to Shrek, he continued, criticizing Moore : 'Mr. Moore has made it a habit of his not to pay attention to facts. And he comes from a very extreme ideology which he in fact opined that we shouldn't have a military response to 9/11 and bin Laden. He's outside the main stream.'
Unfortunately, Mr. Bartlett does not check the polls that continue to point to a majority of Americans now feeling that this war was not justified. Thus he is outside the mainstream. Looking past that forgivable faux pas, lets actually get to the lies and misdirection, which is the cornerstone of this administration. The hope they have is that if they say something enough; people will relate it to being truth. It doesn't matter if you occasionally have to go out and say you made a mistake, such as when they claimed that terrorist activity was down proving the war on terror was working, as long as more people heard the lie, than heard the retraction. Lets take a look at this misdirection from Mr. Bartlett.
The sentence actually reveals a few occasions of misdirection. He starts by saying that Moore has made a habit of not paying attention to the facts. Notice that he doesn't offer any examples, so that Moore can defend himself. That is because the facts in this movie are actually not in dispute. The relationship between the Bush's and bin Laden's is well chronicled. The amount of time the President spent on vacation is fact, for example. Mr. Bartlett's hope is that if he simply sounds incredulous, most will simply accept the premise of his statement. Truthfully though, if Moore were inaccurate with the facts in this movie, he already would have been sued.
Next, is "he (Mr. Moore) comes from an extreme ideology." Does Michael Moore come from an extreme ideology? Obviously not. He has been on the cutting edge of fighting the excesses of big business, the gun lobby and now this corrupt administration. I guess if you are for crony capitalism, no gun control, and war profiteering, then Moore 's ideology would be extreme, to yours. That does not mean that he is extreme to the mainstream in this society. In fact, the polls indicate that this country is finally starting to realize that we were sold a war based on lies and that some people are making billions of dollars from it, and those people can all be traced back to the White House. This ideology is not extreme, it is revealing. However, Bartlett and the right would have you believe that Moore is extreme, and if they say it enough, they hope that eventually you will equate Moore with an extreme ideology, thus removing some of his credibility. We see this tactic being used widely today with the "connection" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda/Bin Laden. Any clear thinking person who read the 9-11 commission report KNOWS there is no connection, yet every day we are hearing from Cheney or Bush that the report supports what they said. In an exercise in word parsing this administration wants you to believe that because bin Laden contacted Iraq once, ten years ago, and received no answer from Saddam, that now we have proven a relationship. They refer to discredited reports as the best source of information of a relationship. Keep in mind that it is their own administration that discredited the reports. It is a Republican led 9-11 commission that determined no relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq . The administration realizes that without this connection, their war is based on lies. Therefore, if they go out and insist enough that it does exist, than maybe people will start believing it. They have enlisted the aid of FOX news channel, which is now sending out its emissaries who pretend to be impartial reporters to support these ludicrous and discredited claims. These are the people of extreme ideology. The ideology that says reports, which have already been proven to be false, are indeed proof positive of why we went to war.
The second part of his sentence is "which he in fact opined that we shouldn't have a military response to 9/11 and bin Laden". This is a clever misdirection, which shows an advanced ability to bury the real lie. Allow me to explain. I do not know if Mr. Moore actually opined that we should not have had a military response to 9-11, that is not what is insidious about this statement. What is, is the fact that Bartlett has made a statement of misdirection, by saying that the war in Iraq is a military response to 9-11. By wrapping it up in the accusation that Moore said we should not have had any response, Bartlett gets to float out the Iraq war as a legitimate military response to 9-11.
Lets get to the heart of it. The Iraq war was sold to us based on lies. These lies have been proven now and there can be no doubt. In case we need a reminder, here is what was said to justify this invasion:
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. - 2003 State of the Union U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq 's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. - 2003 State of the Union Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. - 2003 State of the Union [Saddam has] amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins and possibly smallpox. He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas. - Source: DOD Web site We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. - Source: Telegraph The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. - Source: CNN Web site The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. - Source: White House Web site We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States . - Source: White House Web site
I could go on and on. There were hundreds of instances where we sold this war based on this rationale. We were also sold this war based on the alleged relationship Iraq had to 911. With the release of the 9-11 commission report, we now know there was no link. So, if Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda, who orchestrated 9-11 and they had no weapons of mass destruction, exactly how can one reasonable refer to the Iraq war as a military response to 9-11? To me that would seem to be an opinion of an extreme ideology.
We need to stop lending legitimacy to what has turned out to be an illegitimate invasion. We have killed thousands of civilians, women, and children, to deliver "democracy" as the best direction for this war-torn country. The only question is if this is the right direction, or misdirection.
Anthony Wade is an independent writer from New York . Email to takebacktheus@gmail.com
