The President did not say the Iraq war made the world safer

[JackRiddler]

59. Being able to win a point in court is not the same as telling the truth.

Congratulations on the sophistry that allows him to appear to endorse the aggressive warfare in Iraq and pander to warrior worship while phrasing it such that a strictly correct interpretation of the words allows his intellectual defenders to plausibly claim he didn't really mean it that way. When we're not called out to parse a leader's statements to his advantage in the context of academic debate, however, in every-day political business we're told that politics is all about speaking to emotions and keeping it simple. And this is not an academic debate, but the most widely viewed annual speech to the nation. Syntactical athletics and disclaimers in the small print lend no honor to nationalist pandering, even if we were not talking about the century's most horrific and destabilizing crimes against humanity and international law. But since we are, and since the primary perpetrators live free and prosper under this new leader's jurisdiction and with his blessing, and since the victim nation's sufferings shall endure for generations yet to come, the words, which any Republican could have brought off as easily, are shameful.