Friday, June 08, 2007

Knows

Ezra writes:

It cannot be said often enough, or loudly enough, or forcefully enough, that the Republican Party is uniting around a man who does not know the first thing about the Iraq War. And when I say first thing, I mean that literally. Many of us made fun of Romney's misuse of the terms non sequitur and null set, but the context in which he misused them was far worse. Dodging question about the worth of the Iraq War, he said "if Saddam Hussein had opened his country to IAEA inspectors and they'd gone in and found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, we wouldn't be in this conflict. But he didn't do those things."


I think this misses the point. I don't know what Romney knows or doesn't know about the Iraq war, but "Saddam didn't let the inspectors in" and "Saddam kicked the inspectors out" have both been elements of the standard media narrative for some time. There's no reason Romney should be expected to be challenged on it by anybody but dirty fucking hippie bloggers.

Here's George Bush, July 14, 2003:


The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.


Why shouldn't Republicans just keep repeating this stuff?