The Ironies of the Newsweek Story and the British Memo

[Cary]

Please forgive me for repeating things that have already been posted here. I wrote the basic premise of this post before reading some excellent posts here. I hope I have something to add, but appreciate the opportunity to voice my frustrations. I find it ironic that the right seeks to undermine, in its opponents, that which the right perhaps most glaringly lacks itself--credibility. Two incidents highlight this irony for me. The first incident is the Newsweek story about U.S. interrogators flushing a Quran down the toilet.
Now I doubt whether this story resulted from any administration conspiracy. I don't doubt that they would do such a thing, infiltrating media sources and then having them spring something like this at just the right moment. I doubt that they are so in control of things as to be able to pull this off. I may be naiive and they may truly be that devious and that good. They did fool me before, when I trusted them to know what they were doing before leading us into a war, but I don't like giving them that much credit. I prefer to think they are simply capitalizing on the errors of others.
The fact that I even allow for this proposition of deviousness indicates the level of trust and credibility (or should I say, lack thereof) I have for the Bush administration. At this point they have no credibility with me and should not have any credibility with anyone else either. And this is my point. They don't have credibility. They don't really care about credibility. They only seek to undermine the credibility of their opponents.
So assuming arguendo that I am not naiive, it follows that the administration jumped on what appears at this vantage point to be a journalistic error consisting of a mere 15 words in the middle of a larger story about abuse, torture, and mistreatment of Islamic prisoners. I see from today's excellent posts here that the story is hardly a new or surprising one. And this, according to the Bush administration, has sparked riots and the deaths of some 15 people abroad in anti-American protests (of course no on is questioning Pakistani police for firing into the crowds and killed these people).
Administration critics have been lamenting Bush administration policies for years based on the anti-American sentiments those policies have generated. Since when has the administration and its apologists cared about riots and deaths abroad? Now, all of the sudden, when a scapegoat conveniently emerges those riots and deaths are transforemed into security concerns for the U.S.? And most conveniently of all that scapegoat is the very media that rightists have so fervently endeavored to undermine.
But this is not the only curious event, or perhaps non-event. The recently leaked British memo confirms Bush administration critic's worst fears and accusations--that the pretext for the war against Iraq was based on cooked and nuanced intelligence. This new evidence is attracting virtually no attention.
Now which affects credibility more? An erroneous 15 words in an otherwise unquestioned article? Or an administration that lies about its reasons for declaring a war that has yielded tens of thousands of causualties and costing hundreds of billions of dollars (and, yes, creating anti-American sentiment)? And yet, the memo has no traction.
I can only conclude that the reason this explosive memo is just ho-hum news is that the Bush administration and the right generally have no credibility and don't care. It is not news when rightists lie, regardless of the consequences. It is only news when politicians are caught having sex, or not having sex in the case of Illinois wouldbe senator Jack Ryan.
People, I am afraid we are indeed beyond the looking glass.