Being called a liar is, by and large, an unpleasant experience. I was particularly displeased to note that Shawn Redden’s October 13 column makes that assertion twice, while also managing to compile even more evidence that his pieces have crossed the line into self-parody.
A paragraph from his most recent entry: “Predictably, the Bush gang’s defenders will attack their critics: first, by calling them conspiracy theorists who use ‘rhetoric’ rather than ‘evidence’; next, by distorting their claims and attacking invented straw-men, and finally, by asserting a contrary position as fact without a shred of proof.” I open with such a lengthy quote because I find its first half laughable and its second unfounded-a microcosm for this series of articles in general.
The quotation’s first clause is entirely accurate: I am attacking my critic as a conspiracy theorist who uses “rhetoric” instead of “evidence.” I must confess ignorance as to why they are inside quotes, since their meaning here is conventional; last time I checked, “evidence” was required in order to “argue” a point in a “logical” and “coherent” manner. The proceeding elements of the excerpt are more baffling: I simply point out that by any reasonable measure, Redden hasn’t made his case. Mistake one.
On to my first lie. Redden writes, “Brooks lied by asserting that I claimed the invasion was about oil, when I never offered this simplistic analysis.” I challenge him to find any sentence in my article in which I attribute that to him. I’m looking at it now and all I find are references to “lucrative oil contracts” -comments intended to question the absurd notion that the war was implemented to carry out, as Redden put it, “an imperial coup executed to steal Iraq’s resources…” Contrary to his misleading claim now, Redden never claimed that the occupation was “undertaken to privatize the nation for cronies of the Bush Administration.” In fact, the word “privatize” doesn’t appear in the article at all and the imperial coup is attributed as an event staged by Bush. Oops-mistake three (two was stating that I “sanctimoniously” dismissed the rest of the world, when I never even mentioned them).
Of course, I could have stated that Redden claimed the invasion was about oil, in light of the resources comment, which specifically names it as an outcome of the “imperial coup.” Unless there is a burgeoning Iraqi diamond trade I’m unaware of, that is pretty much the only resource within the country I can imagine being referenced. I eagerly await a report to the contrary. In any case, I made no such claim. Mistake four. These things are just piling up, aren’t they?
As to my next lie-that Congress declared war on Iraq-Redden is correct that Congress did not issue a document containing the words “declaration of war”-something it hasn’t done since World War II. The Congressional resolution was entitled, “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq,” and was roughly identical to the one used for the first Persian Gulf War over a decade ago following the invasion of Kuwait. (Actually, that resolution was less supported in Congress than this one.) I was using the phrase “declared war” in the colloquial sense to indicate that Congress supported the conflict fully, regardless of the specific words it chose. I suppose you could quibble over this if so inclined, but the distinction was certainly lost on, for example, CNN, which headlined its October 11 Web site “Senate Approves Iraq War Resolution.” In any case, this was a misinterpretation of my writing, not a lie (albeit a misinterpretation based on my lack of clarity, not malice). Mistake five.
New Bridge certainly looks suspicious, but no one has said that they actually obtained advantages because of their connections, merely that they could. “Donald Rumsfeld’s assistant secretary’s old law firm’s former partner” is a connection so tenuous that it could have come from an alternate Spaceballs script. Especially considering the fact that Chalabi has an uneasy relationship with the US government, these points are hardly proof of cronyism as an invasion motivation. Mistake six.
By my tally, that makes six mistakes for Redden and, generously, one for me. Since it was unclear before, I do not mean in any way to advocate an alternative interpretation regarding Iraq. Rather, I am writing because I find the columns on the subject thus far both deceptive and uninformative, often coupled with incendiary language and vitriolic, unsubstantiated personal attacks.