White House picked fight with wrong couple

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Because journalists are almost as prone to flatter their audiences as politicians, the staggering ignorance of the American public about matters crucial to democratic self-governance is discreetly ignored. Get this: According to a Zogby poll conducted early this month, almost half (46 percent ) of respondents agreed that “there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9 / 11 terror attacks.” Among Republicans, fully 65 percent believe that Iraq played a role in al-Qa’ida atrocities. Almost two-thirds ! Sometimes it’s tempting to wonder if contemporary Republicanism hasn’t turned into a cult. The poll was taken days after President Bush, during a televised news conference, peevishly confessed that Saddam had “nothing” to do with the 2001 attack. He then denied that anybody in his administration “ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11 th were ordered by Iraq.” But why pick on deluded Bush cultists ? When it comes to anything touching even remotely on their own prerogatives, there’s scant evidence that the courtiers of the Washington press are capable of consecutive thought. Consider conventional wisdom about the revelation in David Corn and Michael Isikoff’s book, “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War,” that columnist Robert Novak’s initial source in the betrayal of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s covert identity was State Department insider Richard Armitage.