Balanced
Spin: Spinsanity Spins a Spinning Bush
According
to Spinsanity's
Brendan Nyhan, "an outrageous new falsehood is circulating
about President Bush. Last week, New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd misrepresented a Bush statement to imply that he
said the al Qaeda terrorist network is "not a problem anymore
. . ."
To
give the appearance of spin impartiality Nyhan has himself spun
a twisted,
if not outrageous new falsehood. He says that Bush's May 5 comments
were "taken wildly out of context" and that it's obvious
what Bush meant.
Could this be
true? Let's break it down. I put the president's comments in italics,
interrupting the flow, but not the order, continuity and context
of his statement.
"Al
Qaeda is on the run."
Good. I may not agree, but I understand.
"That
group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely
being decimated."
Here
we run into trouble. Which group of terrorists is Bush talking
about?
I assume he's including the whole of al Qaeda, because he just
said "Al Qaeda is on the run." He didn't say "the
911 hijackers and their accomplices are on the run."
Nyhan
would claim that Bush is, indeed, talking about "that group of
terrorists who attacked out country" on 911. Unfortunately,
our president didn't say that and beside, the enemy that we face
surely has more than 19 troops.
Suppose
Bush said "the U.S. Armed Forces are victorious." Our
president certainly would have been congratulating ALL of our
service men
and women, not just those who blasted Iraq.
As
far as decimation goes, the hijackers are dead. Their accomplices
are being hunted. "Decimated" is
either a poor word choice or a bit of sarcasm gone awry.
"Right
now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either
jailed or dead. "
Since
most of us don't know how many al Qaeda operatives exist, it's
difficult
to determine what percentage have been captured. Nevertheless,
Bush used the words "all the top al Qaeda officers" without
any qualifiers. He may have meant "all the top al Qaeda officers
who attacked our country on 911." He didn't. Apologists and
future historians might be more adept at reading Bush's mind .
. . or putting words in his mouth.
"In
either case, they're not a problem anymore."
Maybe
it's the fact he's speaking Texan — not English — that
makes our president indecipherable, but I've yet to determine
which
two cases are not the problem. Jailed or dead? One half or the
other half? All of al Qaeda or the 911 hijackers? Jenna or Barbara?
Let's
leave it to Ari Fleisher's replacement to explain. In the meantime,
I hope this unspins the spin at Spinsanity.
— Nathan Callahan, May 26, 2003
Led
by Captain Jesus
H. Christ, son of God, a force of thirty U.S. B-2 Stealth
Bombers landed this morning at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey,
after a “hugely successful” mission over Baghdad.
There was "a buttload of ground fire above the target,” Christ said,
describing red, white and black bursts, as well as "a new kind of glowing
falafel-shaped Iraqi rocket that made an explosion as bodacious as Buddha.
But now, thanks to Western technology and the grace of my Father, there’s
not a minaret standing in that city of evil doers.”
Christ
added that it's not easy to think that some of his weapons may
have killed people. "But this is serious business out here," He
said. "I'm not bloodthirsty, but I'll go out and kill them
by the mosque-full if I need to protect our guys on the ground.
After all, when you look at our job and our bomber and what
it's meant to do ... it's not about forgiveness or any of that
lame shit," he said. "It's about killing and maiming."
"I've
known since I was a little kid in Nazareth that I wanted to
fly upside down and blow things up," Christ added. "And
it makes it extra special when I realize that my commander-in-Chief’s
favorite political philosopher is me."
— Nathan Callahan, April 1, 2003
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