Fuzzing It Up

I don't usually like Ted Rall's commentary. He's the Left's version of Babbling Ann Coulter. But he recently posted an op-ed piece entitled "Fuzzing It Up". It's all about the way Bush encouraged the false perception that Hussein's Iraq was involved in Sept. 11. Rall is dead on here. Bush never said explicitly that Hussein was involved. Yet some 69% of the American people, according to polls, thought he was. According to Rall, this was the result of deliberate deception by the president, who very carefully implied something while never explicitly stating it.

To quote Rall, "On June 17, for example, Bush said that Saddam had 'provided safe haven for a terrorist like [Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi, who is still killing innocents inside of Iraq.' Actually, Zarqawi never lived in Saddam's Iraq; he arrived after the U.S. invasion. But a guy Bush says is like Zarqawi, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, did live in Baghdad under Saddam. To the extent that any Abu is like another, Zarqawi is like Nidal. (In this phrasing, 'like' typically means 'for example.' In order to obfuscate, however, Bush will claim to have meant 'similar to.')" So, technically, Bush didn't say that al Qaeda leader Zarqawi was given safe haven by Saddam, but the impression given by the statement is that he was.

Some may question Rall's interpretation that Bush deliberately mislead the American people on this. At the very least, though, one has to ask why he did not more vigorously correct the public misperception. That this error was widespread was well known before and during the war. Does he not have an interest in the truth? The mistaken impression left on the public was useful to his cause of pushing for war in Iraq. Therefore, at the very least, he deliberately allowed the public to believe a lie because it benefited him. That's disgraceful! Only when the lie was turning against him did Bush decide it was time to correct the public.