At A Western Heart,* C.B. posts a great fisking of Gore Vidal's apperance on the Australian Broadcasting Company's Lateline with Tony Jones.

Vidal is truly an American Idiot. One of those irrational leftists who likes to go abroad and speak out of his ass. i loved this statement, wherein he accuses the Bush administration of lying, and as support for his accusation, he strings together a bunch of real whoppers.

That is what the people around Bush have discovered: you repeat the lie, and if people look slightly doubtful, you repeat it again more loudly, and you go on and on. Bush went on for about three years getting ready for the Iraq war, saying that Osama bin Laden, responsible for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was working hand in glove with Saddam Hussein, who was equally guilty; therefore, we were going to remove Saddam Hussein, because he was so vicious.

The Australian audience for Lateline can't have been expected to know that Bush never made such a statement, let alone repeated it "again more loudly . . . on and on." But i followed the election closely, and Vidal's statement is a boldfaced lie. The closest anyone ever got to pinning the accusation that the Bush administration made an explicit connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein is one sentence in one document. i blogged about this last June.

i think it's despicable that Vidal goes to another country, and uses that line about repeating the big lie (which is a veiled Nazi reference), and then lies himself, thinking he can get away with it.

Kudos to the Australian host, whom i am unfamiliar with, but he did challenge Vidal's assertion that America is a despotic country.

TONY JONES: Despotism, though, and tyranny implies a suppression of dissent. I mean, there's no bar to open dissent in the United States; just simply whether you can get on to the corporate media.

. . .

Gore Vidal, I think you are living proof, however, that dissent is still living in the United States.

* A Western Heart is new international group blog, where i've been recently added as a contributor. There's some good stuff there; i'd love it if you'd go check it out.

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