Analysis: Neo-Con Kristol Still Believes Bush Just Needs to Lie More

Subject:

William Kristol of the neo-conservative movement and Weekly Standard Magazine fame, was recently on FOX News Channel. His purpose apparently, was to continue helping Karl Rove, George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republican Party spin fairy-dust into reality, as was the case relating to the pre-Iraq War intelligence. According to Kristol, the American economy is doing just great, and the war in Iraq couldn’t possibly be going any better. All that was needed he claimed, was for “the President” to go out and tell the people about it.

Analysis:

Selling the Iraq War to the American people was a pretty simple task. Bush-Cheney-Rove and Republicans, the public had assumed, were privy to information that they, the common citizen, couldn’t possibly know. When Cheney, unbeknownst to the people and kept well hidden by entities like the Washington Post and New York Times, was done bullying, intimidating and threatening the intelligence community until they gave him what he’d wanted, i.e., information that supported the Administration’s Iraq policy; and when Cheney had completed the assembly of information gathered from the likes of “Curveball,” Chalabi and Qaeda prisoners, all known to fabricate information faster than Cheney could chronicle it, the Administration then brought that data to Congress and the American people. “Here,” they said “is our case.”

Congress, Democrats mostly, and the American people, intentionally kept unaware of just how the so-called intelligence had been manufactured, were easily duped. It wasn’t a difficult task, for the Bush administration to manipulate people into believing the untruths they were telling. First, Congress and the people, the administration knew, would naturally assume the intelligence had been generated in an unbiased fashion by professionals within the field, and not by political hacks. They wouldn’t have and couldn’t have guessed, that the Bush administration would in essence, create supposed facts out of thin air. Second, Bush and the neo-conservatives knew too, Congress and the American public would naturally assume there to be factors only the Executive, for national security reasons, would be aware.

Selling people on something murky as intelligence, especially when the administration is the ‘gatekeeper’ of all variables and functions entering the equation, is a relatively simple task. Kristol however, and most Republicans in general, mistakenly assume the Iraq con worked just because Bush emphasized, focused and pitched it as a good idea. Therefore, it isn’t unusual that Mister Kristol would now absurdly believe Bush could also, through mere repetition -- as was done with the Iraq pseudo-intelligence – convince the American people that both the economy and war in Iraq are doing just swell. It just isn’t possible.

It isn’t possible for two reasons:

1. When Bush and Republicans were selling the fabricated Iraq intelligence, there was nothing for anybody to reality test their claims against. All the people had was the belief that their government would never be so craven, as to lie them into something serious as a war.

2. People are living the painful economy and they see for themselves the growing quagmire called Iraq.

It is one thing to sell people something they know nothing about, and quite another to convince them the life they are living isn’t real.

Summary:

Mister Kristol’s neo-conservative world of make believe has crumbled around he, Bush and the Republican Party. His and too, the Republican Party’s belief that all they need do is properly package their unreality in order to get the American people to buy it, really is folly. Not only is it absurd, but it shows a complete lack of respect for America’s democracy, the people themselves and the very principles of the nation’s founding.

If Mister Kristol and Republicans wish to try convincing the American people that their economic pain isn’t real, and the deaths of more than 2,000 of their kids in Iraq isn’t substantial, they will fail.

End Analysis