http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1068291199743&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630I'm thinking of having the above photo retaken in order to show the drywall embedded in my forehead. It's a wonder I stopped bashing my head long enough to eke out this column.
It's been that kind of week. First, there was CBS's dumping of its sweeps period biopic The Reagans after a right wing-organized backlash, and then, at Thursday's Canadian Journalists For Free Expression awards dinner, I got into a surreal argument with a TV network foreign affairs producer who made the outrageous claim that the U.S. never lied about its motives for attacking Iraq. The two events are related because it has been my experience in the past two years that, every time you raise an issue that makes those on the right uncomfortable, they change the subject and argue about something else. And so, in making his case about how the Bushies made their case for killing thousands of people in Iraq, my TV foreign affairs colleague kept shifting the debate the way a desert wind shifts the sands. No, the White House never said the U.S. was in imminent danger of attack by nuke-yule-er weapons wielded by terrorists, he said. It merely "sold'' the war wrong. No, President George W. Bush never mentioned that bit about 45 minutes to annihilation. That was Tony Blair. And so on.
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