The Truth is Under [Sa]Fire in the SCLM

If you can get through the whole thing without throwing up, read Safire in today's NYT.

There are so many lies, fibs and dissembles (is that a word?) that it's hard to know where to begin. But if you got through them all, you know what I meant in that first sentence. It's sickening.

I'll see if I can get through a couple of them:

"There is no denying that the shooting down of a transport helicopter, killing 16 Americans and wounding 20, was a terrorist victory in Iraq War III. The question is: Will such casualties dishearten the U.S., embolden failuremongers and isolationists on the campaign trail, and cause Americans and our allies to cut and run?" There's that damned word again. "Terrorist." Whoever is shooting at our people in Iraq are not terrorists. Their targets are, for the most part, military. Therefore, by definition, they are not terrorists. The actions against civilian targets like the U.N. and Red Cross could rightly be considered terrorism. But Safire and Repugs lump them all together with ambushes on military convoys and shooting down helicopters. They are not the same.

"Although such a retreat under fire would be euphemized as an "accelerated exit strategy," consider the consequences to U.S. security of premature departure:

Set aside the loss of U.S. prestige or America's credibility in dealing with other rogue nations acquiring nuclear weapons." Iraq has not been shown to have been trying to acquire nuclear weapons. How many times and how loudly must this be said? It was all a hoax. Yet, apologist that he is, Safire continues to follow the Rethug line on this one. Keep telling a lie and soon enough it is the accepted wisdom.

"Either we stay in Baghdad until Iraq becomes a unified democratic beacon of freedom to the Arab world - or we pull out too soon, thereby allowing terrorism to establish its main world sanctuary and its agents to come and get us." Again, the false dichotomy. We have more than those two choices. Where is the mention of going back to the U.N. with a real plan to share power and responsibility on rebuilding what we broke? Safire completely ignores all but the two options that make liberals and progressives out to be wimps andquitterss.

Which brings me to my final point about this piece:

"Our dovish left will say, with Oliver Hardy, "a fine mess you've got us into" - as if we created Saddam's threat, or made our C.I.A. dance to some oily imperialist tune, or would have been better off with our head in the sand. Most Americans, I think, will move past these unending recriminations, reject defeatism and support leaders determined to win the final Iraq war." Again, Safire paints the left with the broad brush of being quitters on this whole mess. Yes, I would also repeat Oliver Hardy's apropos quip. This is a "fine mess" aWol and the rest of his neocon imperialists have gotten us into. Can we doubt that BushCo, if they didn't invent the threat of Saddam, certainly they inflated it beyond the recognition of even their own CIA?

The whole piece should certainly put the final nail in the coffin of the long dead "So-Called Liberal Media." That a supposedly bastion of big city liberalism like the New York Times would publish something like this puts the lie to that long standing assertion.

From now on Safire's byline should read: William Safire (R, NY).