Roving Innuendo

Karl Rove wants you to remember what he tells you to remember, so try to remember what happened instead.  Rove wants you to remember this revisionist invective:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

Karl Rove is a lying, vituperative, smear mongering cretin, who should be forever removed from American politics.  We were all equally enraged by 9-11.  We united as a country.  Our president had an unheard of 85% approval rating.  Republicans and Democrats united hand in hand supporting war against the regime that harbored the masterminds of 9-11 savagery.  Nobody offered therapy to the attackers.  That was something provided by Rove's puppet when we departed for Iraq.  Neoconservative FrontPage remembers what really happened.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was an overwhelming outpouring of support from all corners of America. New Yorkers, non-New Yorkers, Democrats, Republicans - none of that mattered. We were all joined together as a country to share our grief over what the terrorists did to America that day.

It wasn't just all corners of America, either.  It was all corners of the globe.  In Iran there were candlelight vigils, Arafat gave blood, France, Germany, Russia, and China were all supportive.  The tiny pockets of celebration in Palestine and Saudi Arabia paled in comparison to the universal unity, support and sympathy that was ours, that was needed, and that was sacrificed deliberately if you read the DSMs. 

Nobody talked about indictments, either.  It's a lie dredged up from the smear campaign to "re-elect, re-elect George Bush."  It's a flawed reference to those who understood the necessity for police action; the counterterrorism experts who knew terror cells were asymmetric non-state entities;  experts who were also in hopelessly small  supply and certainly not Democratic or Republican ideologues.  The link to FrontPage above is a baseless smear of our foremost such expert.

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

I agree with Kevin Drum twice:

This is patently more despicable than anything Dick Durbin ever said. But note the Republican response to criticism from Democrats:

The White House defended Rove's remarks and accused Democrats of engaging in partisan attacks. Rove, said spokesman Scott McClellan, "was talking about the different philosophies and our different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

In fact, far from backing down, McClellan said that Rove was just "telling it like it is when it comes to the different approaches for winning the war on terrorism."

That's how the Republican party plays the game these days: accuse Democrats of being traitors and poltroons, and then, when they're called on it, turn up the volume even higher while simultaneously pretending that they're just talking about "different philosophies." This is McCarthy level thuggery, and one can only hope that Karl Rove meets the same bad end as the junior senator from Wisconsin.

And Marc Lynch nails Rove on a more subtle but  more despicable lie.

Leaving aside everything else which could and should be said, let me just point out that Senator Durbin's remarks do not currently appear anywhere on the main page or news page of al-Jazeera's Arabic language site.  It's search engine produces only one hit for "Durbin" in 2005:  a story from June 16 about his remarks and his refusal to apologize.   

I haven't been paying enough attention to the broadcasts, or watching regularly enough, to know whether or not the story has been reported more heavily than this on the air  (though I haven't heard anything about this morning since I started paying attention).   But I can say with some degree of confidence that Condi Rice's remarks in Egypt about reform has received far more attention on al-Jazeera than has Durbin's remarks about Guantanamo.

Just for the record.

Activists March Through Egyptian Capital

And just for the record, if Durbin's comments start popping up in Arab language media, we now have Karl Rove to thank every bit as much as Dick Durbin.   His lies about their coverage just might merit some coverage.  Nice.

Republican screed artist, John Cole, is sick of it all. 

So in the words of Rush Limbaugh, "Don't apologize, Karl.  You've told us who Republicans really are." 

-- Zap

Comments

[Zap]

"Karl Rove is a lying, vituperative, smear mongering cretin..."

Ooops, did I break A2's rules of engagement?

[Torridjoe]

not unless he shows up at Also Also to rebut...

[Zap]

Eh, we know he's a chickenhawk. He ain't comin' 'round here.

[Karl Rove]

I want to make one point only at this time and not discuss which is worse Durbin or Rove's comments.
But there is one factual point which is incorrect at:
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2005/06/
aljazeera_broad.html
And be sure to check comments here:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/
individual/2005_06/006575.php
And his "more despicable lie" is correct at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
D9197A74-6921-428A-ABA8-83517D458536.htm
US senator regrets Nazi remark
Wednesday 22 June 2005, 19:44 Makka Time, 16:44 GMT
"US Senator Dick Durbin has apologised for comparing American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Nazis and other historically infamous figures."
I did read the original June 16 about his remarks and his refusal to apologize but could not bring it up today. I also remember the link from above as of yesterday.
But keep up the good work!
After I appologize for this with tears in my eyes, I will be back.

[Zap]

Ron, er Karl, your aljazeera link didn't work, so I'm going to teach you a trick. I appreciate your participation here. Heck, lately it feels like just the three of us even though our hit count keeps climbing at a satisfactory rate. You are the only regular commenter. You can get better instruction by googling "html hyperlink tag," but here's the trick.

Whenever you want to attack a link in comments you have to place the url within the following hyperlink tag.

The url goes in between the quotes, and you text goes inbetween ><. If I wanted to hyperlink A2 in comments I would type this with the

href="http://alsoalso.typepad.com/also_also/2005/06/roving_innuendo.html">Rove is a boob

Now I'll add the missing " Rove is a boob

That should do it.

[Zap]

That didn't quite work. I'll edit it after dinner and make it make sense.

[Karl Rove]

This is just a test...
I want to make one point only at this time and not discuss which is worse Durbin or Rove's comments.
But there is one factual point which is incorrect at:
Al-Jazeera broadcasts Durbin's words...
And be sure to check comments here:
FACT CHECKING KARL
And his "more despicable lie" is correct at:
Lies...Not
US senator regrets Nazi remark
Wednesday 22 June 2005, 19:44 Makka Time, 16:44 GMT
"US Senator Dick Durbin has apologised for comparing American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Nazis and other historically infamous figures."
I did read the original June 16 about his remarks and his refusal to apologize but could not bring it up today. I also remember the link from above as of yesterday.
But keep up the good work!
After I appologize for this with tears in my eyes, I will be back.
And be sure to check out AlsoAlso.
I tested it on Kos Diary first.
Aljajeeza.net was loading slow this afternoon and this evening it took as much as 10 minutes to load. They update their page every 5-10 minutes.
Thanks for the information!

[Zap]

You got it, bro. No thanks to my sorry help. Google must have come through.

[Ron Rutherford]

At least you pointed in the right direction, and I had no idea how to do it before. With google help with at least about 10 web sites I finally got it right.

[Torrid]

with Karl here, isn't that the four of us?