Frequently, when I read a column by Bill Safire, I have to think to myself: who was the editor on this piece? And what must he or she have thought when they were editing this stuff? Read the man’s column for Wednesday’s paper and it has about as much coherence and rationality as one of your more loopy C-Span ranters just before Brian Lamb mercifully hits the button and sends him off into telephonic oblivion.
This piece is such a clotted mix of discredited ridiculousness, slurs, false claims of racism, disinformation and lies that it’s hard to know where to start.
But allow me a few examples.
First, there’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Safire is still claiming that back before the invasion Zarqawi’s group was working not just within Iraq’s international borders but at the behest of Saddam Hussein. In other words, Safire is still relying on the say-so of the folks who peddled the most discredited of pre-war intel mumbojumbo. Apparently he hasn’t gotten the word. The line is still open to Chalabi, who finally got cut off by the Pentagon this week and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, the guy who put the FU in FUBAR.
(Remember how Zarqawi was supposed to have had his leg amputated in Baghdad before the war? Notice how he now seems to have two legs?)
Then there’s the about-to-be-found caches of biological weapons. For a few months after the war, Safire and similar folks claimed that we weren’t finding the goods because scientists were still afraid Saddam might make a come back — after all, he and other high-value targets were still on the loose. Never a very probable theory — and one pretty well disproved by the deaths of Saddam’s sons and Saddam’s eventual capture.
Now Safire has a new theory. “In a sovereign and free Iraq, when germ-warfare scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals, their impetus will be to sing â and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers.”
To use a much-overused line, you can’t make this stuff up. It transcends self-parody.
Conservatives hunting for media-bias in the Times often pick on its more liberal columnists. In fact, if there’s bias to be found, it’s in Safire. Only lack of interest and respect for conservative opinion can fully explain Safire’s continued presence on the page.
