Shred the lies

Whatever did happen to the shredder?

Maybe it too was shipped to Syria?

Truth of the matter is, some guy told Ann Clwyd that there was a shredding machine and that was enough for the whole world to believe it.

Fucksake. As if people never make anything up, especially about their enemies.

***

I was thinking about the shredder today as I was reading some guy's blog talking about how maybe the WMDs were shipped to Syria (I'm not linking it, I'm just not willing to give these fucking idiots the oxygen of publicity any more -- if you want to know who it was just google "stupid credulous rubes who will vote for Bush no matter what" and you'll get him or someone similar).

So I googled it and I was surprised to find out the truth of it. I had always just assumed it was one more lie used to demonise Saddam (along with HRW's claim that he murdered 300,000 or so Iraqis -- without any but a few of them being buried, which is curious for a Moslem country, or being remembered by their families or friends). So before now, I never knew. If I had known that the whole thing was based on Ann Clwyd's chatting to some guy, I would have laughed it out of the house.

Ann Clwyd long ago hitched her wagon to Tony Blair's. Calling her a lickspittle would do a disservice to lickspittles. She's just another bullshitter, among a group that could serve up a lesson in hypocrisy to anyone outside the Republican party.

***

It's of particular interest here in Australia, because the shredder story played huge here. John Howard has pursued the standard conservative SOP: make your lies Big. Like the Bushistas, he knows that if you make your lies outrageous, so that people can scarcely believe you'd have the cheek to make them up, you'll be believed.

The secret to it is deeper than that though. It's also important to use the other techniques of the Big Lie: ignore all evidence to the contrary as you repeat the lie (you just say that all counterfacts are "uncorroborated" or "unimportant") or claim that what you said should be more broadly interpreted (so that when there is no shredder in Abu Ghraib where you claimed it was, you simply state it was moved elsewhere or that you never exactly claimed it was there but just somewhere; you said you invaded Iraq because Saddam had WMDS, but what you meant was he wanted WMDs).

When all else fails, tell another Big Lie. Tell lots of them. Tell so many no one can quite remember what you have said. A torrent of lies. Shredders, hundreds of thousands of murders, WMDs, terrorists... so much stuff that some of it must be true.

But no. No, actually, it wasn't.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:36 pm