What a Fool Believes

I have said before that I'm delighted that Billmon is blogging regularly again. He's a gem and he's been the go-to-guy on this recent Israel - Lebanon war issue, IMHO. One of his signature techniques is juxtaposition wherein, often without comment, he puts quotes cheek-to-jowl and lets you enjoy the irony/hypocrisy. Today, in a post he calls What a Fool Believes, he comments on the fact that fully 50% of the American public surveyed believed that Iraq did have WMD. As I have said before, BushCo does bad stuff because it knows it can get away with it. It seems impossible to underestimate the voting public. And if they seem to be cluing in, apparently it's just a matter of saying: Look! monsters...! or runaway bride! or shiney things... truely pathetic.

A Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents -- up from 36 percent last year -- said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

"I'm flabbergasted," said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.

"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.

Associated Press
Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD
August 7, 2006

Welcome to the club, Mike.

What the health of the Republic requires . . . may not be a new crop of leakers and whistleblowers, or a fresh young generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins -- or even a more independent, aggressive media. What it may need is a new population (or half of a population, anyway), one that hasn't been stupified or brainwashed into blind submission, that won't look upon sadistic corruption and call it patriotism, and that will refuse to trade the Bill of Rights for a plastic Jesus and a wholly false sense of security.

Whiskey Bar
Sore Throat
June 3, 2005