Olbermann, again

As wonderful as he is compared to just about everything else around, that fact itself is very sad. I don't think it would have been true in the 1970s. The whole piece is short; here's the end of it.

Whatever the true nature of al-Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek--a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration's recent Nazi "kick" is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

9/11 and Pearl Harbor

In a discussion at Reddit, others had already done a better, more patient job of debunking the 'inside job' nonsense than I would've. But when someone mentioned Peral Harbor, I did have something to say (copied below).

Personally, I think it was very much like Pearl Harbor. The conspiriay theorists who say that Roosevelt knew when and where the attack would take place are nuts. Not nuts to formulate the idea, but nuts to take a bunch of straw and concoct an argument that claerly isn't adequately supported by the facts. It's believeable only to those who have a nuttily strong inclination to believe, no matter what the evidence is.

The same holds true exactly for 9/11.

But Roosevelt did pretty much know that his negotiating position would lead the Japanese to attack somewhere. And he wanted that attack, because he recognized that it was urgent that the US enter WWII on the Allied side. Roosevelt probably believed that his position with the japanese was justified, regardless of geopolitical considerations. But it was far more important that an attack by the Japanese would provide the political opportunity to go to war against Germany.

Just how well that translates to 9/11 isn't clear. We don't have the evidence of the discussions among the inner circles of the bush Administration, and we likely never will. I doubt that there was active cooperation between al-Qaida and any of the Neocons. But it's certain that many Neocons recognized that a major attack would, in their distorted and simplistic view of modern geopolitics, provide the political opportunity to get the US to act the way it had to.

In both cases, people sense an underlying truth, and construct conspiracy theories that encapsulate those truths, even though they are literally false. Unfortunately, to those of us of a logical bent, the myths actually serve to discredit the truths that they might highlight.

Mockudrama

In case anyone's missed the discussion, ABC's got an upcoming hit piece posing as a docudrama, blaming bin-Laden on Clinton. It's a full-on, coordinated political proganda, with screenings being provided to conservative pundits and bloggers, so they can have their talking points ready, but not to the principals being msirepresented, let alone to the liberal counterparts of the folks who are getting the screenings.

It was too much for one of the Bush Administration's former anti-terrorist guys, Roger Cressey:

CRESSEY: Then they got the big stuff wrong, this fantasy about how we had a CIA officer and the Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Massoud looking at Bin Laden and they breathlessly call the White House to say we need to take him out and the White House said no. I mean it's sheer fantasy. So, if they want to critique the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, based on fact, I think that's fine. But what ABC has done here is something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful.

SCARBOROUGH: But at the same time, doesn't history show that Bill Clinton had several opportunities to go after bin Laden, but the President and his cabinet were afraid to do so because they may offend some people in the Arab world?

CRESSY: Actually, Joe, that had nothing to do with it. If you read the 9/11 Commission report, it makes it very clear. In most of those cases, George Tenet, the Director of the CIA, said because there was single source intelligence it was his recommendation to the President not to take the shot. There was never a case where we had a clear shot at Bin Laden and the decision to take it wasn't made.