Fighting the Talking Points

I cruise by the right wing blog Townhall from time to time to see what is on the right's mind. It usually some form of whining about mean or clueless liberals or how the right is not tough enough. Today Lorie Byrd wrote a column about the Rosie vs Hasllebeck silliness on The View a couple of days ago. Anyway I could care less about Rosie or Elisabeth said but Lorie Byrd made her points with all the these Republican talking points. Here is a sample of the column.

"Myths are born when an untrue statement is repeated frequently enough, and loudly enough, that many come to believe the statement must be true because they have heard it said over and over again, usually with no refutation. For too long conservatives have allowed statements like Bush “stole the election” and “lied us into war” to be repeated with little if any opposition."

Perhaps because these statements are true and it is hard to deny the truth of them. Maybe if you keep repeating they are not true, you can make yourself believe that. You can even make yourself believe W is a great president or that Saddam really had WMDs or that there a was connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Here is the rest of her column.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LorieByrd/2007/05/25/republicans_should_follow_elisabeth_hasselbecks_example

I am not a big letter writer but I wrote Ms. Byrd a letter just to see how or even if she would repsond. Here is the letter.

First of all I do not like Rosie O'Donnell or Elisabeth Hasslebeck. So I do not really care who said what to whom. I simply do not like the way framed the issues in your column. I disagree with you lumping 9-11 conspiracy theories in with Bush stole the election, Bush lied us into war, and Ron Paul invited 9-11 to happen.

Let's start with the debacle of 2000. Before the election you have Katherine Harris purging voters and then you see her handy work again in the hanging chad fiasco. Then there is the simple Al Gore won the popular vote. You had the faux the demonstrations that were really people that worked for Bush or the RNC who’s only purpose seemed to be to stir up trouble and muddy the waters in trying to decide who the next president would be. Last but last but not least you get the bogus decision by the Supreme Court in Gore v Bush. Maybe he not did steal the election but just received the benefit of the forces that are working for him, kind of like what Ken Blackwell did for him in 2004. Besides stealing the election would require planning and if there is one thing these guys have shown is that they are very bad at planning things.

Next is the idea that Bush lied us into war. This seems to hinge around the world lie, as in knowingly mislead people. This of course is difficult to prove because nobody will ever know for sure. However it does seem pretty clear that the administration was very selective in the information that they used as proof that Iraq had weapons. Plus they relied on men like Chilabi and his bogus information even though most people said he was a liar and a con artist. Once again this goes back to planning. The Bush Administration took their shaky intelligence and went a step further by creating one of the worst war plans in history. So if you want to get into a semantic discussion about the word lie that's fine, but it is clear the Bush was not completely truthful in presenting his case for war. He also had the benefit of the media and a compliant congress (yes both Republicans and Democrats), who were dozing off and for the most part failed to ask the right questions.

Then there is calling Ron Paul a 9-11 conspiracy guy. This is simply not true. I can see in the oversimplified conservative thinking where everything is black and white and there is no room for shades of gray. However in reality based world things are not always so clear. What Ron Paul was saying is that Western interference in the Middle East over the past 50 years has been a factor in men like Bin Laden wanting to attack us. The US bombing Iraq for the 10 years after the first Gulf War, having troops in Saudi Arabia, and abandoning them in Afghanistan after the Russians left. Now one may ask where Ron Paul got such a kooky, perhaps it because it is because what bin Laden said. This does not justify or make what happened on 9-11 right, but it does explain why it happened. That was not a just a random act of violence or because of the right wing talking point of they hate us for our freedom which may be partially true but is not the complete answer. What Ron Paul said in that debate is not some crazed conspiracy theory, but simply acknowledged that our actions in the Middle East have consequences and if we ignore this in our foreign policy we are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. So no Ron Paul is not a nut, he just dared not buy into the oversimplified Republican talking points.

As far as the Bush caused 9-11 or let it happen or the whole host of conspiracies. I do not buy into the idea that Bush was directly involved. Once again the whole it goes back to the planning thing. However the war president did screw up by not paying attention to terrorism until it was too late. Plus there are several questions that have never been answered about that day. Like why were the planes not scrambled when they noticed something was wrong. Plus what the heck was Bush doing just sitting there reading My Pet Goat when he knew the country had been attacked. Even there are questions about what happened on 9-11 most of the conspiracies are either too far fetched or just out and out wrong. The real crime of 9-11 was that Bush has used it to hammer anybody that disagrees with him and of course he used it as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Anyway I will see what happens.