The Best Goebbels of All? (Frank Rich)

[struggle4progress]

Published: June 27, 2004

<snip>
(Ashcroft's) creative gifts were in particular evidence in that televised pre-Memorial Day warning that al Qaeda would hit us hard by the year's end. Flanked by the F.B.I. director and photos of seven wanted terrorists, he enlisted us all as junior G-men — "be aware of your surroundings, remain vigilant" — even as he sowed the seeds of hopelessness that would bind us to him with fear. "Unfortunately, we currently do not know what form the threat may take," he said. "And that is why it is so important that we locate the seven individuals."

Mr. Ashcroft's show looked plausible enough when it led the evening newscasts. Only on further examination did it prove to have more slanted evidence than "Fahrenheit 9/11." The seven individuals he had asked us to help track down are not believed to be in the United States, other officials soon told The New York Times. Six of the seven culprits, in fact, were recycled from previous warnings, one of them dating back to a similar Ashcroft press conference of 28 months earlier. Maybe C-Span 3 could be turned into a Justice Department TV Land to rerun the old Ashcroft episodes.

Another fictional flourish was the attorney general's claim that a Qaeda "spokesman" had "announced" in March that preparations for the attack were 90 percent complete. The announcement was not from al Qaeda at all, Lisa Myers of NBC News reported two days later, but from a Web site run by a group that "has no known operational capability and may be no more than one man with a fax machine." (The same "group" had also taken credit for last year's Northeast power blackout.)
<snip>
Whether Mr. Ashcroft's alarming presentation led to the thwarting of a single terrorist remains unknown. What it did do was take our minds off Abu Ghraib and the rest of the metastasizing bad news from Iraq. Like a master Hollywood showman plotting the release schedule of a movie, Mr. Ashcroft always times his productions exquisitely. Two years ago he held off the announcement of the arrest of the supposed "dirty bomber," Jose Padilla, by a month, at which point that press conference fortuitously drowned out the stir created by Coleen Rowley, the F.B.I. agent who blew the whistle on the incompetence on Mr. Ashcroft's watch before 9/11. This month he changed the subject from Justice Department memos justifying torture by announcing that he had foiled a terrorist plot targeting a shopping mall in "the American heartland" (Ohio, coincidentally the Republicans' most crucial swing state ).
<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/arts/27RICH.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5062&en=71846cecef2cc31d&ex=1088913600&partner=GOOGLE

[teryang]

1. Hey, "let the eagle soar"

Ashcroft is a freakin fascist lunatic. Speaking of "wild eyed," he is clearly a troubled man. In his pedestrian pursuit of banality, one is reminded of Himmler.

[struggle4progress]

2. I agree he seems somewhat off. eom

[kerryin2004]

3. Speaking of Goebbels...

Has to be one of my favorite quotes in regard to this situation..


If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

[struggle4progress]

4. It fits our situation. eom

[alarcojon]

5. Can anyone help me with this?

One assertion made by Rich is the following:

It will take more creativity than this for the administration to distract us from the 9/11 commission, which is refuting Mr. Ashcroft and company's absurd claims to pre-9/11 battle-readiness as firmly as it shot down Mr. Moore's account of the post-9/11 airlifting of bin Laden relatives.

Can anyone point me to the relevent testimony and/or news sources?