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A CONTINUING LOOK AT SOME BEASTIES OF THE BLOGOSPHERE
But is the Blogosphere getting wiser? Another valid contrast point on the Siren issue may be the recent Paul Wolfowitz story. Wolfowitz is Deputy Secretary of Defense, and has served in the Pentagon off and on under Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush. He was in the State Department for the first few years of the Reagan Administration. So his words carry some weight.
Wolfowitz has been twice mis-quoted in the mainstream media recently. First in Vanity Fair regarding WMD:
The quote (from DoD transcripts of a recorded phone interview):
...The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second --
(Pause)
Wolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.
The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.
Q: So this notion then that the strategic question was really a part of the equation, that you were looking at Saudi Arabia --
Wolfowitz: I was. It's one of the reasons why I took a very different view of what the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would destabilize the Middle East. I said on the record, I don't understand how people can really believe that removing this huge source of instability is going to be a cause of instability in the Middle East.
I understand what they're thinking about. I'm not blind to the uncertainties of this situation, but they just seem to be blind to the instability that that son of a bitch was causing. It's as though the fact that he was paying $25,000 per terrorist family and issuing regular threats to most friendly governments in the region and the long list of things was of no account and the only thing to think about was that there might be some inter-communal violence if he were removed.
The implication of a lot of the argumentation against acting -- the implication was that the only way to have the stability that we need in Iraq is to have a tyrant like Saddam keeping everybody in check -- I know no one ever said it that way and if you pointed it out that way they'd say that's not what I mean. But I believe that really is where the logic was leading.
Vanity Fair Quote: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
See the attraction of the Siren Song for the Left? But note the original quote; thought provoking and to the point. A real glimpse at how policy is made at the highest levels. Rather then debate that process openly, the interviewer twists it into something else and lets others attack. Why? Once the original un-edited quote is released the attackers look foolish. Both sides of any issue must watch for this if their debate is to have any validity.
The second mis-quote was in the London newspaper The Guardian, reporting statements made by Wolfowitz in Singapore regarding North Korea and Iraq. The actual quote (from DoD Transcripts):
Q: What I meant is that essentially North Korea is being taken more seriously because it has become a nuclear power by its own admission, whether or not that’s true, and that the lesson that people will have is that in the case of Iraq it became imperative to confront Iraq militarily because it had banned weapons systems and posed a danger to the region. In the case of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons as well as other banned weapons of mass destruction, apparently it is imperative not to confront, to persuade and to essentially maintain a regime that is just as appalling as the Iraqi regime in place, for the sake of the stability of the region. To other countries of the world this is a very mixed message to be sending out.
Wolfowitz: The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy. It’s is also a question of whether, if one wants to persuade the regime to change, whether you have to find -- and I think you do -- some kind of outcome that is acceptable to them. But that outcome has to be acceptable to us, and it has to include meeting our non-proliferation goals.
Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.
The Guardian Quote (perhaps repeating German reports):
"Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
To credit The Guardian, they did retract the quote once it was exposed as blatant lie.
(You can read a synopsis of the Wolfowitz misquotes, and a few other recent newspaper 'gaffes', here.)
To credit the Blogosphere, the Wolfowitz situation was handled quite differently then the Santorum story; with caution at the initial reports followed by indignation and mild outrage at their exposure as almost right. Of course an argument could be made that this is because Santorum was opposed to a popular cause, while the Iraq war (Wolfowitz) was supported by most Bloggers. Thus, the Santorum Siren was much more appealing then the Wolfowitz example. This however, implies a willingness to deny truth (or at least a wilingness to accept something less; the "willful suspension of disbelief" that is the hallmark of good fiction) when it suits the bloggers purpose, or casts dispersion on the validity of claims to value the truth. This does not increase the credibility of a new medium.
