Short Stories, Long Odds

Okay, let me say up front that this is an editorial. It isn’t labelled an editorial, but I can only assume that it is, seeing as how it is largely based on opinion.

In it, Nile Gardiner (Ph.D.) accuses the U.N. of attempting to sabotage President Bush’s re-election effort by way of “leaking” the story about the 380 tons of high explosives from al Qa Qaa in Iraq.

“The real threat here,” he says, “is that un-elected U.N. officials may be trying to bring down a president.”

If you’ve been following this story at all from any other source than FoxNews, you know that Nile’s claim that “in all likelihood, the explosives were already gone when the invasion of Iraq began” is total bunk. This willful ignorance is no excuse, however, for saying that in the case of 380 tons of high explosives, the real danger is a timely leaked story.

Do I doubt that the timing was intentional? Not at all. The U.N. and its agencies and the Bush Administration don’t get along very well. But the evidence and analysis of the Iraq War from the very beginning shouldn’t lead anyone to a state of surprise that this sort of stuff is happening. Seriously, there’s video footage of the IAEA seal being broken way after the war began. Anyone with brains knows that the idea that it happened before the war or that - and I’m serious when I say Drudge and Gertz printed this - the Russians carted it off are more or less completely out of the question and debunked ass over teakettle.

So anyways, Dr. Gardiner works for the Heritage Foundation. If you don’t know what the Heritage Foundation is, the spin and lack of logic coming off Doc Nile might seem surprising. If you know what they get up to, it isn’t surprising at all. Rush Limbaugh claims that “some of the finest conservative minds in America today do their work in the Heritage Foundation.” They call themselves “policy entrepreneurs” - you can guess what that means.

They have research projects like “Teens Who Make Virginity Pledges Have Substantially Improved Life Outcomes” despite lots of evidence to the contrary, such as the average age of virginity loss among abstinence pledgers goes up only 18 months, and then they use contraceptives at a 33% lower rate. I’m not saying teens should be hopping on the good foot and doing the bad thing, I’m just clueing you in to their policy entrepreneur ideas.

Also, they feel as if the gay marriage == marriage fatality and that election of pro-life candidates may be the best way to stop abortion.

So, consider Dr. Gardiner’s evaluation of the U.N.’s participation in the vast anti-Bush conspiracy along with its base in theories either impossible to substantiate or already disproven, and this should give you some idea about how well put-together their Policy Package Deals are.

Editorials usually come from employees of the news organization, and are clearly labeled as such. This piece is neither. The irritating thing about Fox News is that they don’t just come out and say they hate liberals.

I don’t like Bush’s policies. I don’t like many things the man does. I think Neocons are the equivalent of locker-room poison for Team Democracy.

See? How hard was that?

Take this for an example: On Monday, Sean Hannity-Maximus and that poor nice boy Colmes will have the following panel on:

ON THE RIGHT: Karl Rove, Dick Morris, William Weld
ON THE LEFT: Bill Richardson

Karl Rove and Dick Morris would be able to browbeat anyone into submission; I like Richardson and everything, but he’s not a heavyweight debate combatant, and Colmes will be about as much help as, well, he usually is.