Oxycontin News Blog

For starters, why can't conservative talkers and bloggers accept the fact that Valerie Plame was undercover until exposed in Bob Novak's column? Patrick Fitzgerald spoke in English and did not stutter when he said very clearly at the start of his press conference last Friday, "Valerie Wilson's cover was blown". You can only blow a cover if a cover exists. I can understand why Rush Limbaugh had trouble hearing this (he became deaf because he abused oxycontin). But what excuse does Sean Hannity and Max Boot have? Could it be that the whole right wing also is abusing oxycontin?

How about the charge that Joe Wilson lied because he denied that it was his wife who got him sent to Niger in February 2002 to check out claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium? Ladies and gentlemen, pay close attention--CIA officials in July 2003 and in July 2005 have said on the record that Valerie Wilson played no role in the decision to send Joe Wilson to Niger. Although the Senate Intelligence Committee report from July of 2004 tried to insinuate otherwise, Valerie's bosses asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for a mission to Niger and she introduced her husband at a meeting (and then left). She was an undercover case officer, not a manager with the authority to make such a decision.

Then there is the claim that Joe Wilson's op-ed from July of 2003 was a pack of lies and misrepresented the truth. The right wing points to the Senate Intelligence Committee report of July 2004 to prove their point. I don't dispute that the Senate report makes those claims, but the average reader does not know is that report is filled with critical mistakes and deceptions. For example, the report asserts that Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation that bolstered the case for a uranium buy. Not only does Wilson deny this, but the Senate report corroborates his denial by including testimony from the US Ambassador to Niger who states that she and Joe Wilson had reached the same conclusion--the allegation that Iraq was trying to buy uranium was not credible.

What is so bizarre is that the White House did admit that it was wrong to put the infamous 16 words into the State of the Union Address. Moreover, the much ballyhooed Senate Intelligence report cites repeated efforts by the intelligence community to warn the President's advisors not to rely on the various intel reports, including those of the British, because they were not credible.

The right wing--including the Limbaughs, the Boots, and the Hannitys--are having trouble accepting these facts. Some right wing websites, for example, are circulating the claim that the United States actually has discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These sites list biological agents and chemical weapons supposedly discovered in some squirrel hole in the Iraqi desert. Too bad the Bush Administration did not get the news bulletin. Given the bad news hitting George Bush during the last couple of weeks he could sure use some good news.

Meanwhile, Bush supporters have taken refuge in an Alice in Wonderland World where liars are truth tellers and truth tellers are liars. Unfortunately their venom is directed at Joseph Wilson and his wife, two Americans whose only "crime" is that they have served their country and tried to protect it from harm. If that makes one a criminal, count me in.

that's what happens when you challenge a cult of personality.

This kind of BS is so infuriating you want to scream. But no matter what the facts they just keep swift boating away! No wonder Americans are so poorly informed they'r drowning in bull sh-t and deceit!

I've actually thought about this question quite a lot. I'm not sure of why Republicans seem to deny the obvious, but I have a hypothesis. Republicans are raised with the ideas that Democrats are traitors (just look at the titles of their books, like Ann Coulter's and others). I think they just can't wrap their heads around the idea that it is Republicans are putting this country in danger, so they are looking for any justification to deny it.

This divorce from reality is a completely usual sort of behavior among the tin-foil hat crowd (you know, the black-helicopter, kidnapped by aliens, tripartite commission goupies). Actually, the opprobrium is perhaps better directed at those of us who ever took any of those wackos seriously.

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