All he is saying is give (the religion of) peace a chance

Osama bin Laden's message to the U.S. references disappointment with the performance of the Democrats in Congress (as noted at Powerline, it makes him sound like a member of the Daily Kos), so it's timely enough to be real.

Kos-types may well be convinced that bin Laden is greatly enjoying U.S. involvement in Iraq since it supposedly helps so much with recruiting (certainly plum job openings keep occurring as head of AQI). Some apparently sincerely believe that the AQ leader has been playing rope-a-dope with the U.S., absorbing our best shots while his organization increases in strength.

Given that the organization hasn't made an effective strike on the continental United States in over five years, now, that seems like a bit of a stretch. Moreover, it is difficult to see what advantage AQ would obtain if Iraq turned into a democratic constitutional republic allied in waging war against the terrorism of Islamic extremists. About the only one I can think of is the hope that Iraq would be kept from being dominated ideologically by the (in Osama's view) heretic Shia. But if he were that concerned about the Shia then he'd be doing more to liberate Iran, I think (and perhaps we wouldn't see Iranian weapons in Afghanistan aiding the Sunni Taliban).

The simplest explanation for bin Laden's message is his understanding of the media role in democracy. His speech makes plain that he paid attention to the role of public opinion in determining the outcome of the Vietnam War. Bin Laden seems to be trying to add the little push that will tip the U.S. finally against the war effort in Iraq. As numerous commentators have noted, he uses the the rhetoric of the American left in making his case, going so far as to praise Noam Chomsky (the great linguist/political loon).

Bin Laden' s overall message is contained in the last few paragraphs, and this passage sums it up:

There is a message for you in the Mujahedeen: the entire world is in pursuit of them, yet their hearts, by the grace of Allah, are satisfied and tranquil. The true religion also puts peoples' lives in order with its laws; protects their needs and interests; refines their morals; protects them from evils; and guarantees for them entrance into Paradise in the hereafter through their obedience to Allah and sincere worship of Him Alone.
(Ottawa Citizen)

Suicide bombers will be ready to pray with those who go forward to the altar in response to this appeal.

Blumner: Republicans are stupid

OK, not in so many words. It might as well be the title of her Sunday editorial from this past week, however.

Blumner informs us that Gore was right about climate change, and moreover that he is right about American voters being dumbed-down by television news.

And she's got proof. Sort of.

This is Gore's other main point. A citizenry that abandons the dynamic exercise of reading and the reasoning process it engages, for the passive absorption of emotionally charged television images, is susceptible to choosing the worst kind of leaders. And it has.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could never have held on to power and committed the wrongs they have against our constitutional system without a public too wrapped up in the happenings of Natalee Holloway in Aruba to care about domestic warrantless wiretapping.

Gore meticulously documents how Americans have been sleepwalking through their duties as citizens while this administration has been systematically destroying the pillars of our democracy.
(the St. Petersburg Times)

There you have it. Bush and Cheney winning re-election had to do with the stupidity of voters. It had nothing to do with John Kerry's poor campaigning, poor debate performances or flip-flops. And what's with the "domestic" warrantless wiretapping? Number one, the NSA program monitored international calls, not domestic ones. I guess if one end of the call is in the United States, then it qualifies as "domestic" for Blumner's way-above-television-news intellect.
Two, warrantless wiretapping arguably falls within the president's article 2 powers under the Constitution. Blumner's entitled her opinion, of course.

The title of her piece in the Times is "We're the boobs in front of the tube"--but she doesn't really refer to herself. It's not like Blumner would ever have voted for Bush/Cheney. It's your fault, Bush/Cheney voter. You're stupid.

She offers us the wisdom of former television newsman Dan Rather, of fake but true document fame: Television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

This attitude is so typical among newspaper folks. They don't acknowledge the falsehoods they seem to eagerly promulgate (Bush tricked Americans into thinking that Iraq was responsible for 9-11, and Blumner's own statement here about "domestic" wiretapping). The problem, apparently, is that the American public will not believe the lies of print journalism in favor of the lies of television journalism (though I can imagine that plenty of the lies of television news would get a thumb's up from Blumner).

She decries the "drummed up" threat of terrorism (great timing with the recent terrorism plot foiled at Kennedy airport, Robyn!), comparing the chances of dying in a car or plane accident to the chances of dying in a terrorist attack. Funny--I'll be she never used that tack to defend the low number of troop deaths in Iraq.

From there she leaks her apparent belief that Democrat gains in Congress reflect a repudiation of the war in general. Talk about an evidence of superficial reading.

Blumner is a hack. Here's exhibit A: She calls Gore's book "meticulously documented" yet here is Gore's representation of the main point of his book:

It is a seriously indictment of our political discourse that almost three-quarters of Americans were so easily led to believe that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, and that so many Americans still believe that most of the hijackers on September 11 were Iraqis.
("Assault on Reason" @ Amazon.com)

Gore's buying the same media-fed lie that Noam Chomsky and Paul R. Pillar bought. See my post here. Yes, Mr. Gore, it's a serious indictment, at least in terms of gravity. Just one problem. It's a false charge.

It's too ironic for words that Blumner excoriates the broadcast media for engaging in a technique she emulates in print.

***

Last up, the Sawyer interview of Gore. It was after viewing this that I realized that Gore is peddling untruth in his "meticulously" researched tome.

Sawyer, to me, seems excited at the prospect of another Gore run at the presidency. She gives him no hard questions, just the softball question about the political dimension of the book (which is obvious). I think Sawyer wanted Gore to announce he was running, hoping that the wonderful Al Gore would personally effect the changes called for in his book.

The interview also gives more information than does Blumner's print editorial.
Have a look; see what I'm talking about:

"Sublovious Poll": President Bush caused a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who believe that Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks.

I've had the poll up for maybe nine months.

As of May 14, 2007, the poll had fifteen responses.

13 strongly agreed with the statement.
1 didn't know (neutral)
1 strongly disagreed.

The poll is not scientific by any means, but I'd at least hazard a guess that my tradition of blog-hopping the blogs of the Loony Left (that's not all you liberal bloggers, but too many by percentage) draws some attention; they trail back here to see what right-wing nutcase is invading their space.

In short, there's no support for the view that Bush caused any increase in the belief that Iraq or Saddam Hussein were involved in the 9-11 attacks. Those in the reality-based community who strongly agreed with the statement based their belief on a fantasy.

The legend started with a poorly-written account in the Christian Science Monitor. Noam Chomsky picked up on the bad information in that story (probably helped along by left-wing networking--there's a tendency for snippets of information like that to get sent around on listserves and the like). I contacted Dr. Chomsky regarding this issue and he wrote that he could not recall the source of the poll he referenced.
I identified the poll I think he relied on, but he said it didn't look familiar.

Of two questions I asked him, he ignored the second, which was whether or not he continued to believe that the Bush administration had been responsible for increasing the percentage of Americans who thought Iraq was responsible for 9-11.

Here's what Chomsky had been saying, BTW:

The drumbeat for war began in September 2002, and the government-media propaganda campaign achieved a spectacular success. Very quickly, the majority of the population came to believe that Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security, even that Iraq was involved in 9-11 (up from 3% after 9-11) and was planning new attacks.

And here's one I hadn't seen before. Paul Pillar also piled on with some disinformation:

In a poll taken the first week after 9/11, 57 percent of Americans surveyed identified Usama bin Laden as the one most likely responsible for the attacks. Fourteen percent did not know or did not answer, and no other response received more than four percent. Only three percent named Iraq or Saddam Hussein as the leading suspect. In a poll in August 2002--after months of a rhetorical drumbeat in which "Iraq," "war on terrorism," and 9/11 had repeatedly been blended together in words and thus in people's minds--53 percent of respondents said they believed that Saddam Hussein had been "personally involved" in the 9/11 attacks. In a poll in August 2003, after another year in which Iraq and 9/11 were linked in pro-war rhetoric but not in any new evidence, 69 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks.
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Paul R. Pillar

The above material comes from Pillar's introduction to his work.
Google allows a more comprehensive search of Pillar's introduction than the link I provided above.


1) Note that Pillar references the Wirthlin Worldwide poll for his 3% figure, the same figure used by Chomsky.
2) Note that Pillar compares percentages for different measurements as though the comparison is legitimate. Is it?

• a) The Wirthlin poll was an open-ended question. That means it wasn't multiple choice, but the equivalent of fill-in-the-blank.
  
• b) The Wirthlin poll had a follow-up question where respondents were to name their second choice for "most responsible," Saddam Hussein drew 27%. Does Pillar mention it? No, he doesn't. The follow-up question was also open-ended, by the way.
• c) So next Pillar cited the 53 percent poll, where Hussein is named as "personally involved." A person could be third, fourth, fifth, or sixth most responsible and still be "personally involved." These percentages cannot be fairly compared.
• d) Pillar next cites the 69 percent poll, and the goalposts have moved again. This time, the poll measured those who, Pillar says "believed Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks."
• e) Not only is the 69 percent poll another seismic shift for the goalposts, Pillar accepts the worst piece of reporting in the story. Milbank and Deane do lead off with the misleading summary that Pillar repeats. However, the story goes on to say "Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll." "[A]t least likely" turns into an apparently unqualified belief.
  
• In the same story Milbank and Deane reported (safely near the end where many readers never end up) "On Sept. 13, 2001, a Time/CNN poll found that 78 percent suspected Hussein's involvement -- even though the administration had not made a connection. The belief remained consistent even as evidence to the contrary emerged." Another highly significant figure simply ignored by Pillar.

The Wirthlin poll, constructed as it is, may be perfectly consistent with the Time/CNN poll showing 78 percent suspecting Hussein's involvement.
Pillar and Chomsky should know better than to base an argument on this type of statistical malpractice. Chomsky, unfortunately, has a reputation for careless handling of the facts.

Pillar, as a person with a significant role with the CIA, simply reveals how partisanship has roots in the executive branch of government. A non-partisan should not make this mistake. Correction: nobody should make this mistake. A non-partisan wouldn't be expected to make a mistake like this.

There is no reasonable evidence of an increase in the belief that Hussein was responsible for 9/11, much less any evidence that the Bush administration was responsible for the mythical increase.
Thirteen out of fifteen poll respondents were fooled.

I'll keep the poll open, and place a link to this entry nearby. Let's see if the percentages change a bit.

Oh, and one final nail in the coffin:

The American public’s apparently widespread belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 terror at- tacks was no feat of misdirection by the Bush administration. Instead, the Bush administration inherited and played into a favorable climate of public opinion, which may have greatly facilitated itstask of building public support for war against Iraq. The mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks was already widespread among Americans long before President Bush began publicly linking Saddam Hussein with the War on Terrorism. In- deed, nearly seven months before the 9/11 attacks, an Opinion Dynamics poll in late February of 2001 found that 73% of Americans said it was very or somewhat likely that “Saddam Hussein will organize terrorist attacks on United States [sic] targets to retaliate for the air strikes” that had recently beenconducted in Iraq by American and British air forces.
("When Osama Became Saddam" --Altaus, Largio)

See page five of the .pdf file.