Three words: Relationship, Ties, Contacts.
The administration this week has been aggressively trying to say that these things are all the same thing. They said Iraq and al Qaeda had a "relationship," they said there were "ties" between the two. In September 2002, the president said, "The war on terror, you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
Now the 9/11 Commission has clearly said that there is only evidence of "contacts" between Iraq and al Qaeda, and absolutely no evidence of a "relationship" or "ties."
The administration's wording has been very careful here, forcing the commission members to say that, technically, there is no conflict between what they have found and what the administration has been saying. What they're all missing, though, is that there's a huge difference in what they're implying. The discourse surrounding this government has become so fucked up that our press corps seems to think it can only criticize that which has been categorically stated, and that blatant implication, conflations and rhetorical tricks are fair play and not to be questioned.
The basic and obvious problem of the Relationship-Ties-Contacts lie is that it goes in the wrong direction. The administration is implying that the vague implies the specific, instead of the other way around. Their logic is terrible, but that doesn't mean it doesn't sound convincing to many people.
The New York Times on Thursday called for the president to apologize to the American people for misleading them about the connection between Saddam and 9/11. The only scenario in which I can imagine this happening is about 3 weeks before the election. If the polls are looking really bad for Bush, maybe we'll get some kind of last ditch bullshit mea culpa, in which he acknowledges all of the misinformation but doesn't actually take personal responsibility. He'll promise to fire most of his cabinet, transferring blame away from himself, and launch lots of investigative committees in hopes that the public will fall for his "charm" and "honesty" and give him another chance.
It's probably not a very likely scenario, but these days I don't like to dismiss any possibility as too duplicitous for these guys. I think Bush and his boys will literally do almost anything to stay in power, short of nothing I can think of. And if it worked, if we as a people fell for it and reelected him, I just don't know what I would do. I hear New Zealand's nice.
