Posted by Damozel | To see where John McCain learned that the falsity of a statement doesn't matter, we need look no further than the Ministry of Misrepresentation (i.e., the Bush Administration). mIt's seven years after 9/11, and Bush still hasn't caught bin Laden. After seven years of failure, the Bush Administration now says that Osama bin Laden wasn't really the 9/11 mastermind after all.
Bush's Liar-in-Waiting, Dana Perino announced: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now." (Think Progress)
In other words, the mission was already accomplished a while ago -- meaning that the long "pursuit" of bin Laden was futile (or fake). Will these guys ever stop moving the goal post?
While we're in the Mid East, I can't help thinking of Pakistan. The orders may have been secret, but the raids in Pakistan were not. Now, it seems that these raids were carried out without "the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials." (NYT)
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission. (NYT; emphasis added)
As the New York Times says, it's unclear what legal right the Bush administration has to do this in a "friendly country." Apparently the government has "privately assented" to this, at least if you believe the anonymous senior who said so. (NYT)
And it's apparently not going to stop for the foreseeable future. (BN-Politics)
To get back for a minute to bin Laden, it seems that the administration, or at least Ms. Perino, has decided that only super powers could track him down: "there are human limitations... this is not the movies, we don’t have superpowers.”
Isn't that exactly the sort of statement that would tend to give comfort to terrorists? This is not the movies: bin Laden doesn't have superpowers either. And Think Progress points out that he's been caught before.
It didn’t... take “superpowers” to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001, where he escaped in part because of a lack of troops. (Think Progress)
Jesus, these people. And maybe we deserve them. I don't mean you or I, of course, but maybe the great collective "we" totally does.
We, collectively, can't be bothered to learn enough about what's going on---or to keep track sufficiently of history---to know a not-especially-adroit reframe and revision when it happens right in front of our faces.
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