Reply #137: That paragraph is full of doo-doo..... [View All]

[FrenchieCat]

and ya know it.

Here's what "Dirty Work" had to say about that whole incident.

JOM, if you believe Republicans over Wes Clark, then there is no hope for ya.

September 24, 2003
Dirty work
As Ken Parish notes, perhaps the clearest signal that Wesley Clark is on the up and up is the way in which he already "has the loony right … in full-on attack dog character assassination mode". Ken was referring to an article in William Kristol's Daily Standard, the link to which EvilPundit supplied as evidence of Clark being "busted telling fibs".

The main charge refers to the story that has been put about by a couple of Republicans, who allege that Clark told them in January that he "would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned his phone calls". What's interesting is the history of the story, which originally surfaced in Newsweek. Clark openly admitted to the line, but said he was just joking ("a humourous tweak"). Newsweek didn't quite accept this, and added assurances from the two Republicans that Clark was serious ("He went into detail about his grievances ... Clark wasn't joking. We were really shocked.").

Now, it seems to me that this spin strikes at Clark's base-building, which is where, after all, the primaries are being fought out ... suggesting that Wes is merely just another politician, being an opportunist with no real convictions, let alone left convictions. OK, one small unbalanced hit, but this is where the Standard's story comes in, and gets funny. The entire unedited reference, which is the story's lead, is as follows:

WHEN WILL Wesley Clark stop telling tall tales? In the current issue of Newsweek, Howard Fineman reports Clark told Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and University of Denver president Mark Holtzman that "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls." Unfortunately for Clark, the White House has logged every incoming phone call since the beginning of the Bush administration in January 2001. At the request of THE DAILY STANDARD, White House staffers went through the logs to check whether Clark had ever called White House political adviser Karl Rove. The general hadn't. What's more, Rove says he doesn't remember ever talking to Clark, either.

OK, let's quickly go through it. The Standard has (1) dropped all reference to the sources being Republicans, (2) failed to mention that Clark said it was a joke, (3) proceeded to actually substantiate that Clark was joking by checking that he was absent from the phone records, and (4) perversely used this fact to spin a fresh allegation that … he lied!

Can't wait till the story is repeated by an Australian columnist (which one? place your bets). It's going to be a long season folks. I could go through the other two pieces of crap in the Standard's article, but it's shooting fish in a neocon barrel. Suffice to say that the anti-Bushies can take heart. The enemy is rattled. Meanwhile, over at Calpundit, Kevin Drum has noted the more salient fact about the article, which "is that the White House is apparently willing to search Karl Rove's phone logs upon request by reporters". As you might guess, Kevin's commentators have been coming up with some good suggestions.

UPDATE: Love this one on the 'sock puppet' from Rush baby, particularly this bit: "That's exactly what he means here when he talks about how we must 'respect dissent'. If you don't hate America and this president, then you're not patriotic as they define it." As someone said in Alice and Wonderland, 'words will mean whatever I want them to mean' (or words to that effect).
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