Thursday, July 24, 2003

Liberal Lighthouse - Nicholas Thompson's article in Salon gets at an interesting irony in the latest rounds of attack-and-defense regarding Bush's SOTU "Uranium in Africa" statement. YatPundit suggests (and thanks to YatPundit for pointing me to the Thompson article in Salon) that we hold Republicans to the same "liar" standard that they held to Clinton. His strategy to Democratcs that we should drum this point over and over again is a good one.

As for me, I am enjoying the pickle that this current debate on the Bush/Clinton truth-equivalence presents to Republican, Bush-defending, Clinton-despising moralists. It seems to me that if Republicans maintain the position that Clinton is a liar, why would it come as a surprise to them if he exaggerated the intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs that led him to order military action against selected Iraqi targets in 1998? Seems to me that Republicans are missing the irony here. They are basically putting Bush and Clinton on the same moral ground here - which must mean either one of two things: either Bush and Clinton were BOTH liars, or Bush and Clinton were BOTH telling the truth. If the former, then Bush should be held to account by Republican moralists as a liar (as YatPundit suggests). If the latter, then Clinton obviously wasn't such the "liar" he was made out to be.

Can it really be true that Bush supporters are now becoming Clinton apologists, too? I love this little hole the Bush-supporters have dug for themselves. They have now based their defense of Bush by saying he only did the same that the "nasty, lying, conniving" Clinton did!

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