In a posting
last Friday, neo-conservative and Iraq War enthusiast David Frum
speculates about which member of the McCain campaign team was
responsible for the leaks to the press regarding the ignorance of Sarah
Palin on basic facts that her debate and interview preparation
revealed. But he finds the guessing game entirely galling:
self-serving motives can place such lethal (but not 100% credible)
stories on the public record – unproven, unchallenged, and unsourced,
while the people who broadcast the allegations connive in concealing
the information that would allow listeners to decide for themselves how
credible the allegations are?
Wasn't
this the very game that Bush's White House, where Frum served as
speechwriter and cheerleader, played with exquisite expertise to sell
the Iraq War to the American people, falsely building up the threat of
Iraq with anonymous, unproven, unsourced quotes from "administration
officials?"
Fudging the facts a bit while whispering in secret to Judith Miller and The New York Times to get the U.S. into a war
is one thing, but when it comes to something consequential like whether
Sarah Palin knew whether Africa is a continent or a country, it's time
to really question the rules of this game.