Marble Composition

Huh? Oh, Degenerative Research Program, I get it

Last night Stephen Hadley, the president's National Security Advisor, was on the News Hour, and in his defense of Bush regurgitating 9/11 in his speech the other night, he said this:

The president talked about Sept. 11, because that's, of course, the day that the war on terror came to the United States. And the point he wanted to make is that the terrorists who are behind Sept. 11 share the ideology of terrorists that are also against us in Iraq. There are terrorists that have come largely from outside Iraq; they have joined criminal elements; they've joined former regime elements and some Iraqi extremists.

But his point is that Iraq is really part of the war on terror because a number of the folks who are doing damage to Iraqis and to American citizens -- men and women in uniform in Iraq -- share the same ideology as those who brought us 9/11. That's the point. That's why Iraq is really part of the war on terror, and why it's so important for that reason as well that we prevail there.

Time out, because I call bullshit. The deliberate sleight of hand going on here is that there were no terrorists of that sort in Iraq before the war started. At least not in any part of Iraq that Saddam Hussein controlled. In the second graf he conflates the War on Terror with the war in Iraq, as he and his colleagues are prone to do, when even the American public is waking up to the fact that they were completely seperate endevours. Listening to these kind of statements makes me want to pull my hair out. There is absolutely no question whatsoever that he's intentionally trying to deceive people with this tortured logic. One thing he's right about is that there sure are foreign fighters there now. I'm sorry Mr. Hadley, that's a really nice tie you're wearing and all, but you're completely full of shit.

Also, Matt Yglesias over at the American Prospect points out this little gem from Andrew Sullivan:

THE SYRIAN BORDER. I think it's clear that if you're looking at purely military things that could make a real difference in Iraq, preventing the infiltration of foreign fighters (and, one assumes, supplies and money) from Syria would be the most useful thing. Andrew Sullivan has a series of posts on the subject that includes this moronic suggestion from some readers:

The first is that the open Syrian border is a deliberate policy, the fly-trap theory, if you will. According to this theory, we want the Jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere to come to Iraq so we can deal with them there.

One sees reasoning of this sort on display more and more nowadays. The key premise is that Bush never makes mistakes, so proponents need to undertake valiant efforts to prove that apparently disastrous goings-on are, in fact, part of a brilliant plan. This is what Imre Lakatos called a degenerative research program.

Oh I get it now Andy & Co., we want these terrorists in there attacking our soldiers and Iraqi citizens. Boy was I confused...

posted by FuzzFinger @ 6/30/2005 07:02:00 PM