John Cole: Why Be Honest When You Can Be Gliberal Instead?

January 24, 2008 in Balloon Juice, Eschaton
Tags: Iraq, John Cole, President Bush

This is a day old, but worth calling attention to:

Yeah. That is why he didn’t address the studies. Anyone with half a brain would not find that even remotely controversial. Hell, perhaps we can ask Mr. Yankee to point us to all those WMD we found. Or maybe he can discuss the Office of Special Plans a bit. Or maybe not, as they have already had a pretty bad week at Red State, what with Fred dropping out of the race and all.

John Cole is LYING. Well, no he’s not. But why afford him the subtleties of such distinctions when his entire blogging mission since about 2004 is to smear the bloggers he once counted as allies? In his own mind, he’s the one being reasonable. In reality, he’s borrowed a page from David Brock and answered what he thinks were execesses on the right and “made up” for them with excesses now on the left.

You want to see a serious response to the same study, John? Here, James Joyner will show you how it’s done:

This is the crux of the matter. Being proven wrong is not “lying.”

The study is entitled, “False Pretenses: Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” Quite clearly, then, the authors contend that the statements were made with full knowledge that they were wrong in order to lead the nation to war.

The study finds no such thing.

If John Cole was intellectually serious, he might have written the same thing. But fat chance of that. He’s too busy trying to be Atrios.

Forcing himself to confront another serious-minded conservative blogger, which Cole might in fact have been at one point (it’s hard to recall) he goes with snark over smarts again:

Captain Ed finds the real villain- GEORGE SOROS!

Whoo — you really showed Captain Ed! John Cole, you may not be a liar, but you are dishonest.

N.B. Much less surprising but still stupid is DownWithTyranny, on the same Soros-funded report:

STUDY FINDS THAT BUSH… LIED… ABOUT IRAQ! CAN YOU IMAGINE!

LIBERAL BLOG INTERPRETS WEAK REPORT TO CLAIM BUSH… LIED… ABOUT IRAQ! CAN YOU IMAGINE!