Thursday, June 23, 2005

Fire with Fire; Lies with Truth

I'm sure that if I surfed around more I'd see other people making this point, but I haven't yet, so here goes. What Democrats need to say in response to this piece of odiousness from Karl Rove:

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." (cited from)

-- seems totally obvious. We need to say something approximating the following:

Al Jazeera now broadcasts the acts of the Bush Administration -- in Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere -- certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of the Bush Administration, or their efficacy in protecting America.

The point is, or should be, really clear. It's not Durbin's (supposedly but not of course really) comparing Americans with Nazis that endangers our troops. It's the Bush administration's encouragement of, toleration of and promoting policies which lead to acts more befitting Nazis than Americans which endangers our troops. And their failure to accept any real responsibility for it -- no: their active rewarding of those who are most responsible for it -- is simply the venomous icing on the poison cake.

PS: Googling the words "Guantanamo Bay" -- to be sure I'd spelled it correctly -- led me to the official web site of the Guantanamo Bay military base, including profiles of available housing (in all the standard language of a real estate agent's brochure) and a recent (PDF) profile of the graduates from the local high school. As Elijah Snow might say: Strange world.


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