A total disregard for the truth

I didn't have anything to write about with respect to the Richard Clarkestravaganza, but the professional liars of the right wing character assasination squad gave me something to write about.

It was inevitable that the Bush faction, in its various manifestations, would go after Richard Clarke like a pack of wild dogs. He is a serious threat to their capacity to retain power. Clarke dissolves one of Bush's strongest assets, that people think he's strong on terror. At least his message does. His story is also not easily spun in a fashion that benefits Bush.

That doesn't mean that the cretins and liars of the Pro-Bush slime machine won't try. In fact, disingenuous creeps like Joe Scarborough and the unspeakable Ann Coulter will selectively quote a background briefing of Clarke to suggest he is a liar. These issues have been (convincingly) responded to by Clarke himself in his 9/11 testimony... it seems that when people who work for an administration speak for the administration, they are encouraged (and why not?) to put the best face on their employer's performance.

By the way, I had succesfully avoided Ann Coulter for several months. I figure that the best thing to do with such an exhibitionist of hate is to ignore her. I had the misfortune of catching her on Scarborough Country, where she impugned the patriotism of anyone to the left of Bill Frist, which is pretty much her schtick. When I was rotting my brain on cable news two years ago, I was compelled by these freakshow, up-is-down characterizations of the world. How could anyone believe that? I would think.

Back to the Clarkestravaganza. The Fox News organization is Bushco's first line of offense. It is, or should be, an outrage that FoxNews would release background briefings only to attack an opponent of the president. But it should not be a shock. Fox News is, and has been, not only an ally of the Bush administration, but basically an organ, employing dozens of Baghdad Bob wannabees, running the ideological gamut from Sean Hannity to Bill O'Reilly. If anyone would reveal information that's on background, which is, of course, a breach of journalistic ethics, and do so to slime someone "disloyal" to Bush, it would be this fair and balanced crew.

This behavior on the part of the Fox folks is not unlike the behavior of a few Republican staffers, which is under ongoing investigation. It seems that Republican staffers had hacked into Democratic Judiciary Committee staff memos, and collected these hundreds of documents in order to undermine the Democrats' strategy of pushing back Bush's judicial nominees. When confronted with their actions, the line from these staffers was that the espionage they had engaged in was nothing compared to the politicization of the judiciary the Democrats had engaged in. Or that there is nothing wrong with taking this information, because, by making the files relatively easy to hack into, the Dems had invited it. The point is, I guess, that doing manifestly wrong things is justified if your enemies are just as bad.

I figure the"Clarke is a liar" line of attack is probably what the Bush White House and its cronies will stick with, now that Cheney's hilariously ill-considered claim on Rush Limbaugh's show that Clarke was "out of the loop" has been rendered inoperative. After all, they can't continue claiming their Counter-terrorist chief was out of the counter-terrorist loop. But furthermore, rebutting Clarke's testimony with proof of Bush's sparkling pre-9/11 performance is unlikely because there don't seem to be any facts to support that position. As such, reiterating in Borg-like fashion that Clarke is a liar because he presented a different picture of Bush's performance in the WOT while he was working for them from the one he is presenting now that he has left the administration in disgust with their instigation of a counter-productive war in Iraq is probably their only option.