You Can Believe Me Or You Can Believe Your Eyes

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

[…]

Bush’s defenders say the administration’s rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein’s involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein’s secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. “The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn’t do that,” said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. “They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem.“

Ooooh. The “intellectual argument.” I guess they are talking about those nasty Birkenstocked elites again. Real people just wanna kick some Ay-Rab asses. It don’t matter who done it, them ragheads is nothin’ but one Big Problem. Yee – hah!

Golly, one might conclude from reading this that Bush’s campaign strategists see such ignorance, prejudice and racism as opportunities to advance their agenda. How typically Republican of them.

But, you’ve gotta love this:

Key administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was involved in the 2001 attacks. “I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading hawk on Iraq, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Aug. 1.

Well, I’m not sure even now that I can fully grasp just what a lying, mendacious, intellectually incoherent piece of shit Paul Wolfowitz has turned out to be.

2 days after the attacks Wolfowitz said:

“I think one has to say it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that’s why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.”

Even a year later he was still spouting much the same line.

And, why did he say this? What led him to think that “ending states that sponsor terrorism” would end the threat from al al Qaeda? Was he simply lying straight out or did he actually — stupidly — believe it?

I think, sadly, that it may have been the latter.

This nonsensical theory came about because of his and other neocon fellow travellers’ close association with one of the most crazed nutjobs in Washington, somebody who should have been placed in the far fringes of tinfoilhat-land and was instead operating as a “fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute (alongside other kooks like Michael “Ghorbanifar go-between” Ledeen.) That person was Laurie Mylroie and her obsession with Saddam Hussein had led her to the completely insane and ridiculous thesis that international terrorism could not exist without Iraq’s sponsorship, as she reiterated just 2 months ago in testimony to the 9/11 commission.

This is the caliber of thinking Paul Wolfowitz admires and writes glowing book blurbs about.

It has become clear that if Paul Wolfowitz had exercised just a little bit more taste and discretion in his choice of dinner party companions (like Chalabi the conman and Mylroie the paranoid obsessive), we would likely not be in Iraq today. (Josh Marshall has more on the complete destruction of credibility of one of the shining lights of neconservatism, whom he calls the “Comical Ali” of the neocon collapse. Ho. )

With people like this in charge, it is easy to understand why Americans are completely confused and deluded about our foreign policy.

It’s going to take a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic candidates for president to educate the country about this. They must repeat it over and over again.

And, it’s another reason why whoever becomes the nominee is going to be irreparably hamstrung by a vote in favor of the war. Voters may allow a Republican frat boy to be stupid on national defense, but they will not allow it of a Democrat. That’s just the way it is.