Wednesday, September 15, 2004

It's Done With Mirrors



A good example of the way the wingnuts have taken over what goes for the media these days:

On the September 10 edition of his ABC Radio Networks show, FOX News Channel host Sean Hannity suggested that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) may have been behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos. Hannity based his suggestion on his claim that the controversial memos relating to President George W. Bush's military service, which were first aired on CBS's 60 Minutes, were obtained by "the same person that had the Abu Ghraib pictures."
From the September 10 edition of ABC Radio Networks' Sean Hannity Show:
HANNITY: [T]his woman who also produced -- was the producer who obtained the Abu Ghraib photos. ... [T]he same person that had the Abu Ghraib pictures -- the Abu Ghraib photos is apparently the same one that got these documents. ... Now here's the question. Where did she get all this stuff from? So that could mean that Abu Ghraib -- where did that come from? Was that a DNC plot too? I mean, there's a lot of questions here


See how it is done? You take an assertion which is unproven: that the documents about Bush's Guard duty are forgeries and that these forgeries come from the DNC. Then you imply that this (totally unproven) assertion implies that something else might also be a forgery arising from the DNC. The Abu Ghraib photos of torture!
Mindboggling. But this is what goes for punditry these days. I can see why I wouldn't qualify.

The most logical theory about the Bush Guard duty documents are that they are forgeries by Karl Rove. This makes sense because the facts are real, and if it was obvious that they would come out despite Rove's best attempts, then the way to muddy the waters would be to make some forgeries of the true documents. I'm not saying that my theory is true, of course, just wondering...