Andrew Sullivan (who I am loathe to link to) has the fake but plausible accusation. The left is SO desperate to believe that George Bush is the devil and we are imperialist wackos they'll grasp to any illusion and claim it is true, or if it is not true that it should be.
Seymour Hersh, Naomi Klein, and others were saying at IIMPR that civil war is beginning in Iraq, even though many insurgents aren't even Iraqis. This is not to say we are doing brilliantly in Iraq, but let's be honest, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are all anxiously sending people across the borders to fight us.
The left in this country has become disconnected with the truth and they are willing to grasp to any lie that supports their point. "Fake but plausible"? Hardly. This isn't a gift "from the administration to Osama Bin Laden", this was a gift from the liberal media and Newsweek to Osama Bin Laden.
This story first appeared at Ravings of John C. A. Bambenek
Article comments
1 - RJ
Has anyone else noticed that Sullivan has gone from comparing Bush to Lincoln and Churchill, to endlessly attacking him and his administration as inept and corrupt?
And that these two inherently-conflicting opinions of the man came about at exactly the moment when Bush publicly supported the Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage?
No bias there...
2 - John Bambenek
Well at least he's branching out from his favorite issue of gay marriage...
3 - Eric Olsen
when I started blogging three years ago, Sullivan was the best-known, most-respected, and most important blogger. Now he is nothing more than a turd floating in the has-been punchbowl.
4 - Joe
Hey! He did bring back the phrase "gob-smacked." Doesn't that count for something?
5 - Temple Stark
Damn, Eric. Just because he's thoughtful and not easily pigeon-holed either left or right? Or something specific?
6 - JR
Sounds like he's easily pigeon-holed as a self-centered, single-issue partisan.
7 - Dave Nalle
I hadn't thought much of Sullivan overall, but then I saw him on Bill Maher last week and was surprised by how sensible he sounded. He addressed a broad range of issues and did it in a coherent and generally level-headed way. Made me take him more seriously than I had.
Dave
8 - miriam
Has anyone ever noticed that Sullivan, the proponent of gay marriage, never mentions the name of his significant other? He is referred to as "the boyfriend." Doesn't he deserve the dignity of a name?
Why doesn't Sullivan leave the Catholic Church and join the Episcopalians? It would be a better fit for him.
9 - Dave Nalle
Maybe Sullivan doesn't want to expose his private life in public? Seems sensible to me.
Dave
10 - RJ
Read his Blog today. He's attacking Instapundit...
11 - Thad Anderson
I think the point Sullivan is trying to make is that interrogators flushing a Koran down a toilet would be entirely consistent with various other things that have happened in US interrogations in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
While Newsweek definitely deserves the criticism they're getting for publishing a false story, it is absurd for the Bush administration to act like this one article has single-handedly damaged its image (or the country's image) in the Muslim world.
The Army's internal report on Abu Ghraib, the Fay Report, has an appendix listing incidents in which detainees were forced to pose in homosexual positions, wear women's underwear, eat pork, or drink alcohol, with the goal of humiliating them by taking advantage of Islam's prohibitions against those things.
A list of incidents begins on page 130 of the PDF of the Fay Report: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nationi/documents/fay_report_8-25-04.pdf
No one is saying that "George Bush is the devil and we are imperialist wackos" - just that his administration has a horrible record when it comes to the treatment of Muslim detainees. I would say that the Bush administration is crazy to think that the American people will buy into the idea that Abu Ghraib is just an invention of the media . . . but then I wouldn't have learned anything from the 2004 election.