Jude's Law

Love him, hate him, there is nothing quite like Jude Wanniski tearing into someone. This time it is Dick Cheney's weekend performance on Meet The Press.

Comments

[Dan]

there is nothing quite like Jude Wanniski tearing into someone

I dunno about that. He sounds pretty much exactly the same as a couple dozen other incoherent war opponents I could name.

[mike]

I stopped reading after JW suggested that the Taliban was only being reasonable in offering up Osama to the UN if the us could produce evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. (And hence we were unreasonable war-mongers in just attacking.) What a joke. JW is so caught up in his hyper-libertarian anti-war froth that he has lost any sense of reason or balance. What a waste of time.

[Jason Holliston]

I really don't want to fisk a fisking, but I really don't see this as a very compelling in this article. There's oft-repeated anti-war lies laced throughout the piece, like there's no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda (anyone read the New Yorker?) and that there's been no poll showing the majority of Iraqi's support the liberation or occupation (http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=22949).

Like a majority of anti-war people, they bend the facts to fit their world view.

[Reg]

"there is nothing quite like Jude Wanniski tearing into someone"

I was prepared for a lot more than Jude gave. If thats the best the anti-war folks can do against Cheney, you guys have a long ways to go. Same old lies and half-truths from the anti-war folks.

[Andrew Lynch]

Same old lies and half-truths from the anti-war folks.

William Saletan over at Slate writes about our obsession with trying to characterize "the opponent" as the bigger liar, the heavier mud-slinger, the fouler evil. At the end of his article, he quotes a colleague (Jack Shafer), and I'm having it tattooed on my ass (the wuote, not Jack Shafer).

"If you're interested in which wing lies more, you're probably not very interested in the truth."

Foom!

[Jason Holliston]

Andrew,

That's a nice blanket statement, but people do, in fact, lie sometimes. I've seen many White House press secretaries, both Dems and Reps, do it. It's actually pretty damn rare to see a sitting president do it, though.

Anyway, I might have rushed to the "lie" thing too fast -- it could be just willful ignorance.

[Ron Hardin]

The Wall Street Journal gives Wanniski the epithet ``maniacal self-promoter Jude Wanniski,'' which struck me as apt. I can't follow whatever he writes any longer. Boredom prevents finishing whatever it is. You never know which regular dot will be connected but it will be one you've seen connected a thousand times, and no more plausibly than ever.

If on the other hand you're a gold nut, or think deflation has been raging in the US for twenty years, Wanniski is your guy.

[Les Milton]

I'm confused. I'm not "anti-war" but how many obvious lies must the VP of the U.S. spew before people will hold him in more contempt than some relatively unknown blogger for a clumsy rebuttal to those lies?

[John Hood]

Joe:

How about E) what weapons Iraq posessed had were destroyed in the 1990s by inspectors and Operation Desert Fox, Bush knew it, and mislead the public and Congress.

Nope, this merely feeds the third option I wrote about, the Saddam-bluffing option. Saddam's regime has already stated that they had WMD capability and stuff as recently as the late 1990s. Sure, they could have been bluffing in an attempt to deter a U.S. attack or to show how mean and mighty they were to the Arab world. Thus the bullet to the temple.

And if Bush and Co. knew there to be no biochems to threaten our troops, they sure went to a huge and expensive amount of trouble to deploy protective gear and train troops and media how to use them. Oh, right, this was all part of the plan. . .

Not a vast conspiracy over two decades, but a short conspiracy over six months.

Your timing also doesn't work. Six months is too short. American politicians of both parties have been talking about Iraq's WMD for years, particularly after the expulsion of the inspectors in the late 1990s. So the conspiracy would be that the Clinton people and the Democrats in Congress knowingly started a lie in order to let a future president, Bush it turned out, repeat the lie to justify a war. Just plain silly.

It appears to be impossible, however, to persuade otherwise-rational people not to buy into these silly conspiracy theories. Chomsky chumps are one thing, but shouldn't reasonable libertarians be a harder mark for the nutcases?

[Les Milton]

I'm still confused. The WMD issue is admittedly complex, hardly black and white, not cut and dry! Okay, you get my point. But the bigger issue is that it's a lie to say you know something, when you really merely suspect it despite a lack of evidence. Cheney continues to do this. Even Bush himself did it on the "Mission Accomplished" commercial aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln when he described Iraq as "...an ally of Al Qaeda." The CIA and the FBI have searched high and low for evidence that clearly demonstrates a link between these two evil entities and if they'd found it, then they would have said so. They've said just the opposite.

According to Boston Globe:

A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the official said, speaking on condition he not be named.

So, it seems more than technical arguments about the existence of WMD's, the important issue is that our leaders are lying to us regularly. Libertarians who, for valid reasons, supported the war, should be able to resist the urge root for the home team and focus on what is factual and what is not.

[Rick Barton]

John Hood wrote:

"you know that the forged documents regarding Niger were NOT relied on by the Brits...They say they relied on other information...Thus Bush's statement was true when it was uttered and continues to be true today."

Wrong! The conflicting statements Jack Straw issued concerning the importance of these forged documents before and after their bogus nature was made public has been one of the, if not THE main point hurting Blair in the Kelly tradgedy. And, what about that "other information" John? Such as the poorly plagiarized grad student thesis which Powell referred to as "a valuable report" at the UN. Also, lets not forget the claim that "the UN weapons inspectors have been unable to find chemical weapons because the Iraqis have been adept at hiding them in mobile labs." This assertion was used by both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was also the basis of Powell?s UN presentation.

Proven Fact - The Observer (Guardian Unlimited) reported in early June that British intelligence ?has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987.?

John Hood further wrote:
"I am perfectly willing to grant that some of the intelligence didn't turn out to be square-on -- that's the nature of intelligence."

That is also the nature of lying, which governments (as libertarians and conservatives have noted) engage in all too easily when trying to "manufacture consent" (credit to Chomsky, hey, truth is where you find it, even when coming from a source that is wrong about a great many things) for missions such as war and others that the public might be dubious about. John, given all the whoppers that were used by the government to justify this war, when you attribute the "not square" intelligence concerning the drones to simply the "nature of intelligence" are you not engaging in a type of "history theory of conspiracy" (I meant the word order the way I wrote it) fallacy? Also, didn't John Locke have some things to say about government and lying?

"More generally, however, as we have discussed (and debated) before, the subsequent difficulty in finding WMD in Iraq does not disprove the causes for going to war."

As I remember, what we debated was, "When is war and intervention in general justified under libertarian principles?" And, although I think the facts have made your contentions concerning the Iraq war quite untenable, you are at least attempting to justify it consistent with libertarian principle.

"It appears to be impossible, however, to persuade otherwise-rational people not to buy into these silly conspiracy theories..."

First of all, just to be clear, there is nothing inherently "silly" about political conspiracy theories. Also, Because the situation has a long history and the neo-cons have been agitating for an attack on Iraq for longer than six months does not negate Joe's statement that:

"...what weapons Iraq posessed had were destroyed in the 1990s by inspectors and Operation Desert Fox, Bush knew it, and mislead the public and Congress. Not a vast conspiracy over two decades, but a short conspiracy over six months."

John, Joe and all,
I'm sorry, but I will not be able to respond to any rejoinder until Sunday evening (except, perhaps in the most brief way) due to time pressure as I am trying to prepare for a chess tournament which starts Friday night.

[Rick Barton]

I meant of course: JUST "Because the situation has a long history..."

[Frenk]

It is truly astounding that people are still defending the Bush administration's dissembling -- even when administration members themselves admit "overstating for effect" (Rumsfeld).

And lest this be deemed a dose of liberal baloney, let's check the source: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34642

Hardly Mother Jones, don't you agree?

[dhex]

i'm just waiting for WMD evidence to be discovered in syria and iran and east new york and ontario and...

[Rick Barton]

Dan wrote:
"He sounds pretty much exactly the same as a couple dozen other incoherent war opponents I could name."

Reg wrote:
"Same old lies and half-truths from the anti-war folks."

What pretend universe are these guys living in?!!

Actually, the Anti-war folks now semm absolutely prophetic:

In January of this year, President Bush used the State of the Union Address to firmly tell Congress and the American nation that Iraq was a threat to peace in the world, and, specifically, a threat to US shores. President Bush cited evidence of Iraqi efforts to procure enriched uranium: ?The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.? The claim was repeated by several senior members of the Bush administration, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was later circulated that documents were in Coalition hands implicating that Niger was the country providing the uranium to Iraq.

Proven Fact ? Subsequent research by the CIA, MI-6, UN weapons inspectors, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have revealed that Bush?s claim was simply unfounded. The documents linking Niger to Iraq were third-rate forgeries, according to the IAEA.

US President George Bush repeated claims that Iraq was in possession of aerial drones fitted with chemical weapons delivery systems. This was also the basis of US Secretary of State Powell?s UN ?evidence against Iraq? presentation.

Proven Fact - Subsequent intelligence and analysis from Iraq indicate the drones could not have possibly been designed except for reconnaissance missions. No chemical delivery systems were found. The Associated Press would later report that ?Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, US weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration?s public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren?t designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons?.

[John Hood]

Rick:

Come on now. if you have been paying attention, and by all accounts you have been, you know that the forged documents regarding Niger were NOT relied on by the Brits to come to their conclusions regarding Saddam's search for nuclear material in Africa. They say they relied on other information, and still stand by it. Thus Bush's statement was true when it was uttered and continues to be true today.

Your point on the drones is much better. As a hawk on this, I am perfectly willing to grant that some of the intelligence didn't turn out to be square-on -- that's the nature of intelligence.

More generally, however, as we have discussed (and debated) before, the subsequent difficulty in finding WMD in Iraq does not disprove the causes for going to war. Either 1) Saddam smuggled them out of the country, 2) hid them well, 3) bluffed about having them, or 4) the entire WMD issue in Iraq was a fantasy concocted over the past two decades by a vast conspiracy of Democrats, Republicans, Europeans, Iraqis, military-industrial-media complex flunkies, etc.

If the first two are true, the war is justified on national security grounds, with the potential advance of freedom in the region a welcome side-effect. If the third is true, then the war is still morally justified in the same way that an idiot who waves a pretend gun around in a bank and tries to bluff his way into some cash should expect a bullet to the temple. If the fourth proposition is true, then obviously I'll have to admit my role as a faux libertarian in the Illuminati/Masonic/neocon/Mr. Burns conspiracy and face the consequences.

[joe]

John,

The Bushies don't even talk about WMDs and mushroom clouds any more. Even "programs" has become passe. They're down to "capabilities," meaning the presence in the country of people with graduate degrees in the sciences.

How about E) what weapons Iraq posessed had were destroyed in the 1990s by inspectors and Operation Desert Fox, Bush knew it, and mislead the public and Congress. Not a vast conspiracy over two decades, but a short conspiracy over six months.

[citizen Able]

Two words: "imminent threat."

Two more words: "pre-emptive war."

Two more words: "Nuremburg Trials."