Buried in his latest goofy anti-War on Terror screed- in which he calls Lynndie England“the dominatrix of the American dream” - the Village Voice’s Richard Goldstein actually says this:
What did the president know and when did he know it? That last question hasn't been asked since Deep Throat's glory days.
Say what? Actually, that question’s been asked all the time- so much, in fact, that it’s become a tiresome cliché, as Lileks pointed out last week. It was asked about Reagan during Iran-Contra, about Clinton during both Waco and Monica, and Bush, well, pretty much since right after 9/11.
The administration’s gotten a lot of things wrong lately, that’s for certain. But for journalists/politicians to drag out clichés from the Vietnam/Watergate area isn’t helping anyone; if anything, it’s cringe-inducing. Goldstein pretending that “what did the president know” isn’t a lame, played-out anachronism is just as dishonest as Dick Morris’ claim that his recent book was his “first time” writing something nasty about Hillary Clinton.
While we’re on the subject of the prison atrocities, Slate gives us a handy guide to the goofiest right-wing justifications/minimizations of the Abu Ghraib debacle.
Posted by Stephen Silver at May 13, 2004 06:29 PM